8 ms·

Tilt Five – Bring holograms home – Play your favorite games in 3D

asynchronous 3y ago
Price seems high for multiple pairs of headsets - that’s going to be hard to justify when you need 5 pairs for a DND session.
- vkou 3y ago
  I will also point out that ~99% of the fun of table-top RPGs is not pushing miniatures around on a mat, and spending a mountain of money on optimizing the fidelity of that remaining 1% may... Not have the best ROI.
  - mustacheemperor 3y ago
    For my gaming group, most of the appeal of Tilt5 isn't "AR Dnd maps", but being able to play complex, multi-piece tabletop games without as much up-front expense or setup time. There's games like Big Trouble in Little China that are a blast to play, but require quite a bit of setup, maneuvering minis around, managing mini character-sheets, etc. If Tilt5 could automate most of that, it would be fantastic. Essentially, let it push the miniatures around for me, to the right places, and without me having to purchase and store the enormous box containing all of the gear. I'm sure Tilt5 takes up a fair bit of space, but so do 10 games of the same complexity as BTiLC! Not to mention the many great games that were only ever sold as a limited release, have gone out of print, etc. Is this actually possible with Tilt5 today? I'm guessing licensing issues would make it a challenge. TableTop Simulator seems to get around licensing by essentially being a big sandbox the community can create anything for, but the application itself is so heavy and complex it's not very fun in practice (IMO, for our group).
    - jonny_eh 3y ago
      Being able to save the state of the board, for easy resuming later, is a killer feature.
  - munk-a 3y ago
    I grew up on Rifts, WoD, Warhammer Fantasy RPG and HERO - I've always disliked using minis and having a fancy board setup... but electronic tracking systems have changed that somewhat. I dislike the WH40k-esque cone area of effect measuring systems and similar components but being able to use virtual boards to set up encounters you didn't see the party getting into on the fly is quite a bit more attractive to me. As an improvisational DM I still prefer verbally describing scenes but I can understand the benefit in moving over to these virtual systems.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    The fun of tabletop games is social. It's getting together with your friends and interacting directly with them. I'd have less than zero interest in playing tabletop games if everyone at the table were wearing headsets of any sort. We might as well just play online.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      Is it ever sunny when you play tabletop games, resulting in people wearing sunglasses? Do any of your fellow players have vision problems resulting them in wearing regular glasses? Have other players ever worn a face mask around you due to some sort of an unknown pathogen? What is your policy on hats? You're fine with some sorts of headgear, what makes this one so different? From watching the video, even with those headsets on, if Jim on the other side of the table is being the dick he is, I can still throw my beer at him. Which maybe isn't the most social thing there is, but he's always hogging the health packs.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        None of the face appliances you list are actively vying for the attention of the wearer. It makes a pretty big difference. It's like if everyone at the table were paying attention to their phones, except the phones are invisible. The active attention barrier sitting between people in a social setting doesn't bother you, and that's fine. It bothers me and that's fine, too. It just means that this sort of product isn't my thing. It doesn't mean that this is a bad product nobody should use or something.
        fragmede 3y ago
        I can see the analogy with people being on the phone, in then their phone can only run the same app as everyone else in the room. Have you played SpaceTeam/what is your opinion of it?
- bredren 3y ago
  For both the combined price of a 3 pack and 2 pack, you’d be halfway to a single Apple Vision Pro! Really, though—isn’t this sort of like the Tiger electronics handheld to the Gameboy? Those things were kinda fun, and definitely cheap, but the writing was on the wall.
  - thesuitonym 3y ago
    Could be, but maybe Vision Pro is the Lynx to Tilt Five's Gameboy?
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      It’s not. They are both Virtualboy.
      - Tao3300 3y ago
        Teleroboxer on the Virtualboy was peak gaming.
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    Quest 3 will have better AR functionality too at $499 Demeo is getting mixed AR too https://www.resolutiongames.com/demeo https://www.resolutiongames.com/demeo
munk-a 3y ago
Interesting - though I hate their use of terminology. A play mat and accompanying tracking wand for precise targeting is much different from anything hologram related. This is not a projector system but rather AR glasses with a high visibility base mat for orientation.
- polpo 3y ago
  It's projection and the gameboard is a retroreflector. Their about page goes into pretty good detail about how it works: https://www.tiltfive.com/the-system https://www.tiltfive.com/the-system
  - dag11 3y ago
    If it's a retro-reflector, how's all the footage on the site showing that images are appearing outside the retroreflective area and on top of the tracking markers?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - polpo 3y ago
      Because the footage isn't "real" and isn't through the lens from the perspective of the player. Actual through-the-lens video I've seen is constrained to the retroreflective surface. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjr__J-ego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjr__J-ego I suppose there's a chance that something that is within the confines of the play mat from the player's perspective could appear outside of it to a theoretical outside observer, so they made their marketing reels have stuff appearing outside of the retroreflective mat.
    - gamblor956 3y ago
      I was wondering about that too... It appears that they have two boards: a flat board where the images are limited to the reflective area, and a bent board (which has a flap that lifts up at an angle) so that you can get an actual 3d visual...for 3 out of 4 players (the image is still limited to the reflective area, but the reflective area is now 3d instead of just a flat plane).
pugworthy 3y ago
This is from Jeri Ellsworth, an interesting person who's name pops up in the AR/VR (and Commodore 64) world now and then.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Jeri Ellsworth is awesome and has always been awesome.
  - pnw 3y ago
    Amen. She really is awesome. I was so happy she was able to continue with this product after the previous venture imploded.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- HWR_14 3y ago
  This is the same concept that she kickstarted years ago and then, sadly, never delivered. She did refund people's money, IIRC, when she used the social proof to get VC funding, which was nice of her. I thought the IP was stuck in some kind of bankruptcy court hell. The price seems to have increased dramatically.
  - detaro 3y ago
    wrong way around in a way: it was a VC-funded thing that failed, the tech then turned into a kickstarter, which then gave renewed proof for investors to support it too. (Kickstarter was 2019, so unsurprisingly delivery took longer than planned)
    - HWR_14 3y ago
      I was correct in the order. They had a 2014 kickstarter for CastAR[1] that they used as proof of concept to get VC-funding. That company failed. They then (presumably) reacquired the IP and had a second kickstarter for the new company. I'm only talking about the first kickstarter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR
ansible 3y ago
I've been debating on and off about getting a system. I think it has a lot of potential. Is it me, or is the list of games available shorter than it was last year?
londons_explore 3y ago
If this is any good, china will be able to copy it far cheaper. Tiny projectors can already be had for inside $5 [1], cameras under $3 [2] - and since the game board is retroreflective, you don't need any substantial brightness. Someone using all noname parts can probably get this to market for under $40. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003386129982.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003386129982.html [2]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005525339771.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005525339771.html
- ClassyJacket 3y ago
  "Does not contain the drive circuit" "The drive current is unknown" "The owner didn't know how to test" I get your point but I'm not sure I have any confidence in that example.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    That normally means 'these devices are someone else's custom design, and we aren't allowed to share datasheets'.
russdill 3y ago
It's really exciting to see this revived https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/26/15877804/castar-shut-down https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/26/15877804/castar-shut-down
- Animats 3y ago
  It is. It's was a really neat idea in 2013. But it's a decade late. There's so much VR and AR headgear now that people expect better visuals.
personjerry 3y ago
> Play your favorite games Which one of these are supposed to be my favorite? I think this is the hole that sinks the ship. Catan at least is relatable, but am I going to play Catan with this instead of cardboard?
- mfragin 3y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I had an active computer programming club for years at the high school level. One year, some of the very same kids proposed that we start a "tabletop gaming" club. Computers weren't allowed. Nothing like pushing cardboard around to make a person whole again. :-) That said, I can see how something like this could be pretty cool. Instead of playing Up-Front and imagining that the terrain cards are now serving different purposes (like desert or jungle terrain), it would just look correct. Of course that says nothing about why 3D is necessary....
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  Growing up near the sea, my sister was given a copy of Settlers of Catan as a present. Within a couple of years, the damp air had warped the hexagonal cardboard pieces so much that you could no longer fit them together, let alone place the wooden 'roads' between them. You might not believe me unless you've lived on the coast yourself, but this device probably has a longer life expectancy than the cardboard version :)
throwaway675309 3y ago
I like the idea of being able to use this with classic miniature based war games such as Warhammer where the cost of the physical figurines alone could easily reach the price of this headset. However I see two issues there, number one is pricing. It's unclear to me how much the games themselves would cost and this headset is already relatively expensive particularly since it's marketed as a group activity - just three players already runs you $1000. That's a lot of money to drop on a VR related device that has significantly more limited applications as opposed to a more generalized system such as the upcoming Apple vision, and the oculus. And number two is that you have to use a wand to manipulate the board and the pieces, and I question how accurate this will be if there are literally hundreds of pieces on the board. I could see it becoming extremely frustrating very quickly. And I'll be honest, and this is not the fault of tiltfive but I really like the weight of a pewter figurine in my hand and the lack of any haptic feedback might bother me.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > That's a lot of money to drop on a VR related device that has significantly more limited applications as opposed to a more generalized system such as the upcoming Apple vision, and the oculus. This is true, but that doesn't mean there's no market for it. I'm not interested in Apple Vision, Oculus, or similar because I'm not interested in tying myself to those ecosystems. I could be interested in something like this, though. Maybe not for playing tabletop games so much, but it would be fun to explore other uses.
  - ehnto 3y ago
    There are VR headsets not tied to those ecosystems. VR is a fair bit more useful and general than this device is. It's also very well supported by the open source community and is becoming a more general computing tool. I can't discount the Tilt entirely, I have never tried it, but to me it looks like one is a novelty for a niche purpose, and the other is becoming a general computing interface.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
idopmstuff 3y ago
I bought one and was really disappointed - the visual didn't feel as 3D as I expected. Their marketing videos make it look like things really feel like they're coming up out of the board, and to me it just felt like the board was sort of a TV laid flat on the table. Things were 3D only in the same sense that they are on my monitor. Also some really bad UX stuff - you have to have the glasses plugged into an Android phone or Windows PC. I have a Windows laptop, but the cord to plug in was so short I almost pulled it off the table a couple of times. I Googled, and that was a pretty common complaint that came up, which is just such a silly thing to get wrong. The controls also weren't that good - when pointing sometimes it'd just lose track of my controller. I tried with a few games and never had a particularly good experience. Overall, this was one of those things where the marketing made it feel like I should expect a magical experience, and the reality was very disappointing. Thankfully, they have a return policy - it's buried in their site and confusingly worded, but I was able to ship the thing back to them and get a refund.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
  > Their marketing videos make it look like things really feel like they're coming up out of the board, and to me it just felt like the board was sort of a TV laid flat on the table. Things were 3D only in the same sense that they are on my monitor. You don't by any chance have an undiagnosed stereoblindness do you? The promo videos make it look like extremely classic fiducial marker positioning of 3D models. The rest is up to your eyes and brain to be able to see depth from stereo. Have you been to a 3D movie? If so did it feel like 3D to you? The only scenarios that make sense from your description of it looking the same as a computer monitor are that either you got a broken one or you personally cannot see depth from stereo. I want to add that brains are very good at hiding this. If you've never used VR or been to a 3D film, its entirely possible that you could be stereoblind and just don't know.
  - idopmstuff 3y ago
    I've done 3D movies, and they look as expected. I guess I'm not quite being accurate when I say it was exactly like stuff in 3D on my monitor - it did sort of look like things were 3D, but meaningfully less than what I expected. Honestly, I'm having a hard time describing it accurately, but suffice to say it was extremely underwhelming.
MegaDeKay 3y ago
I'm surprised it doesn't support Linux given Jeri's hacker background. Only Win10/11 for now, select Android devices this summer, and macOS later this year. I was about to add that one thing the marketing videos don't show is that every pair of glasses needs to be connected to its own dedicated PC. So if you had five people sitting around a board game, there would be five PC's required as well. Glad I checked first. That used to be the case but it looks like they have addressed that recently. Nice! > With our 1.3 driver update one Windows10 PC can support multiple Tilt Five Glasses. Depending on how many USB-C and USB-A ports you have on your PC, you may need a powered hub to provide enough power and data bandwidth to run more than two Tilt Five Glasses. https://www.tiltfive.com/faqs https://www.tiltfive.com/faqs
- jgennis 3y ago
  We do have "unofficial" Linux support that you can download at: https://docs.tiltfive.com/t5_release_notes_19ii.html https://docs.tiltfive.com/t5_release_notes_19ii.html We can't promise to prioritize issues found in it, but we do use Linux for a lot of our internal development. We're targeting Ubuntu, but I don't think there's anything that would preclude getting it working on another distro.
iblaine 3y ago
I saw the kickstarted version of this at a maker fairy and was blown away. The product was great for what it did.
LarsDu88 3y ago
It took many years, and the product is starting to look dated in 2023, but kudos to Jeri Ellsworth for finally executing on this.
zfxfr 3y ago
I had the occasion to try it at Revision 2023 (a demoparty). The demo was a missile game (for those interested you can watch it here : https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2023/revision23/game/recube_neon_command_video_and_release_file.7z https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2023/revision23/game/re... ) It was indeed fun to try but I have played similar games on my Oculus Quest and the experience on Quest (or any other similar headsets ) is much more immersive. Now I just discover the price : 359USD without shipping cost. I must say I find it quite expensive. At this price I rather buy a Quest 2 or wait for the Quest 3 wich will offer full Mixed Reality capability.
ActionAndo 3y ago
I enjoy my Tilt Five so far. I don't understand some of the other commenters saying that the 3D visualization was subpar; everyone to whom I have shown the simple Geometry demo was really impressed! I bought it to develop content in Unreal for some AR fun; but the Unreal SDK plugin doesn't seem to be a top priority for them. My main complaint thus far is that I shelled out a lot of extra dough for the package that included THREE HEADSETS! Whoa! THREE headsets that you can plug in locally, so you can enjoy it with friends! But then very few, if any, apps for TIlt Five supported local AR multiplayer. Maybe that has changed in the past month or so. I need to dive back in to it. I think it's an expensive novelty that will have an interesting place in the museum of XR development.
ilovecurl 3y ago
This "tech" does not create holograms. I'm tired of folks misusing the term.

Price seems high for multiple pairs of headsets - that’s going to be hard to justify when you need 5 pairs for a DND session.

vkou 3y ago
I will also point out that ~99% of the fun of table-top RPGs is not pushing miniatures around on a mat, and spending a mountain of money on optimizing the fidelity of that remaining 1% may... Not have the best ROI.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  For my gaming group, most of the appeal of Tilt5 isn't "AR Dnd maps", but being able to play complex, multi-piece tabletop games without as much up-front expense or setup time. There's games like Big Trouble in Little China that are a blast to play, but require quite a bit of setup, maneuvering minis around, managing mini character-sheets, etc. If Tilt5 could automate most of that, it would be fantastic. Essentially, let it push the miniatures around for me, to the right places, and without me having to purchase and store the enormous box containing all of the gear. I'm sure Tilt5 takes up a fair bit of space, but so do 10 games of the same complexity as BTiLC! Not to mention the many great games that were only ever sold as a limited release, have gone out of print, etc. Is this actually possible with Tilt5 today? I'm guessing licensing issues would make it a challenge. TableTop Simulator seems to get around licensing by essentially being a big sandbox the community can create anything for, but the application itself is so heavy and complex it's not very fun in practice (IMO, for our group).
  - jonny_eh 3y ago
    Being able to save the state of the board, for easy resuming later, is a killer feature.
- munk-a 3y ago
  I grew up on Rifts, WoD, Warhammer Fantasy RPG and HERO - I've always disliked using minis and having a fancy board setup... but electronic tracking systems have changed that somewhat. I dislike the WH40k-esque cone area of effect measuring systems and similar components but being able to use virtual boards to set up encounters you didn't see the party getting into on the fly is quite a bit more attractive to me. As an improvisational DM I still prefer verbally describing scenes but I can understand the benefit in moving over to these virtual systems.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  The fun of tabletop games is social. It's getting together with your friends and interacting directly with them. I'd have less than zero interest in playing tabletop games if everyone at the table were wearing headsets of any sort. We might as well just play online.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Is it ever sunny when you play tabletop games, resulting in people wearing sunglasses? Do any of your fellow players have vision problems resulting them in wearing regular glasses? Have other players ever worn a face mask around you due to some sort of an unknown pathogen? What is your policy on hats? You're fine with some sorts of headgear, what makes this one so different? From watching the video, even with those headsets on, if Jim on the other side of the table is being the dick he is, I can still throw my beer at him. Which maybe isn't the most social thing there is, but he's always hogging the health packs.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      None of the face appliances you list are actively vying for the attention of the wearer. It makes a pretty big difference. It's like if everyone at the table were paying attention to their phones, except the phones are invisible. The active attention barrier sitting between people in a social setting doesn't bother you, and that's fine. It bothers me and that's fine, too. It just means that this sort of product isn't my thing. It doesn't mean that this is a bad product nobody should use or something.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        I can see the analogy with people being on the phone, in then their phone can only run the same app as everyone else in the room. Have you played SpaceTeam/what is your opinion of it?
bredren 3y ago
For both the combined price of a 3 pack and 2 pack, you’d be halfway to a single Apple Vision Pro! Really, though—isn’t this sort of like the Tiger electronics handheld to the Gameboy? Those things were kinda fun, and definitely cheap, but the writing was on the wall.
- thesuitonym 3y ago
  Could be, but maybe Vision Pro is the Lynx to Tilt Five's Gameboy?
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    It’s not. They are both Virtualboy.
    - Tao3300 3y ago
      Teleroboxer on the Virtualboy was peak gaming.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  Quest 3 will have better AR functionality too at $499 Demeo is getting mixed AR too https://www.resolutiongames.com/demeo https://www.resolutiongames.com/demeo

munk-a 3y ago

Interesting - though I hate their use of terminology. A play mat and accompanying tracking wand for precise targeting is much different from anything hologram related. This is not a projector system but rather AR glasses with a high visibility base mat for orientation.

polpo 3y ago
It's projection and the gameboard is a retroreflector. Their about page goes into pretty good detail about how it works: https://www.tiltfive.com/the-system https://www.tiltfive.com/the-system
- dag11 3y ago
  If it's a retro-reflector, how's all the footage on the site showing that images are appearing outside the retroreflective area and on top of the tracking markers?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - polpo 3y ago
    Because the footage isn't "real" and isn't through the lens from the perspective of the player. Actual through-the-lens video I've seen is constrained to the retroreflective surface. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjr__J-ego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjr__J-ego I suppose there's a chance that something that is within the confines of the play mat from the player's perspective could appear outside of it to a theoretical outside observer, so they made their marketing reels have stuff appearing outside of the retroreflective mat.
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    I was wondering about that too... It appears that they have two boards: a flat board where the images are limited to the reflective area, and a bent board (which has a flap that lifts up at an angle) so that you can get an actual 3d visual...for 3 out of 4 players (the image is still limited to the reflective area, but the reflective area is now 3d instead of just a flat plane).

pugworthy 3y ago

This is from Jeri Ellsworth, an interesting person who's name pops up in the AR/VR (and Commodore 64) world now and then.

JohnFen 3y ago
Jeri Ellsworth is awesome and has always been awesome.
- pnw 3y ago
  Amen. She really is awesome. I was so happy she was able to continue with this product after the previous venture imploded.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
HWR_14 3y ago
This is the same concept that she kickstarted years ago and then, sadly, never delivered. She did refund people's money, IIRC, when she used the social proof to get VC funding, which was nice of her. I thought the IP was stuck in some kind of bankruptcy court hell. The price seems to have increased dramatically.
- detaro 3y ago
  wrong way around in a way: it was a VC-funded thing that failed, the tech then turned into a kickstarter, which then gave renewed proof for investors to support it too. (Kickstarter was 2019, so unsurprisingly delivery took longer than planned)
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    I was correct in the order. They had a 2014 kickstarter for CastAR[1] that they used as proof of concept to get VC-funding. That company failed. They then (presumably) reacquired the IP and had a second kickstarter for the new company. I'm only talking about the first kickstarter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR

ansible 3y ago

I've been debating on and off about getting a system. I think it has a lot of potential. Is it me, or is the list of games available shorter than it was last year?

londons_explore 3y ago

If this is any good, china will be able to copy it far cheaper. Tiny projectors can already be had for inside $5 [1], cameras under $3 [2] - and since the game board is retroreflective, you don't need any substantial brightness. Someone using all noname parts can probably get this to market for under $40. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003386129982.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003386129982.html [2]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005525339771.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005525339771.html

ClassyJacket 3y ago
"Does not contain the drive circuit" "The drive current is unknown" "The owner didn't know how to test" I get your point but I'm not sure I have any confidence in that example.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  That normally means 'these devices are someone else's custom design, and we aren't allowed to share datasheets'.

russdill 3y ago

It's really exciting to see this revived https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/26/15877804/castar-shut-down https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/26/15877804/castar-shut-down

Animats 3y ago
It is. It's was a really neat idea in 2013. But it's a decade late. There's so much VR and AR headgear now that people expect better visuals.

personjerry 3y ago

> Play your favorite games Which one of these are supposed to be my favorite? I think this is the hole that sinks the ship. Catan at least is relatable, but am I going to play Catan with this instead of cardboard?

mfragin 3y ago
Couldn't agree more. I had an active computer programming club for years at the high school level. One year, some of the very same kids proposed that we start a "tabletop gaming" club. Computers weren't allowed. Nothing like pushing cardboard around to make a person whole again. :-) That said, I can see how something like this could be pretty cool. Instead of playing Up-Front and imagining that the terrain cards are now serving different purposes (like desert or jungle terrain), it would just look correct. Of course that says nothing about why 3D is necessary....
seabass-labrax 3y ago
Growing up near the sea, my sister was given a copy of Settlers of Catan as a present. Within a couple of years, the damp air had warped the hexagonal cardboard pieces so much that you could no longer fit them together, let alone place the wooden 'roads' between them. You might not believe me unless you've lived on the coast yourself, but this device probably has a longer life expectancy than the cardboard version :)

throwaway675309 3y ago

I like the idea of being able to use this with classic miniature based war games such as Warhammer where the cost of the physical figurines alone could easily reach the price of this headset. However I see two issues there, number one is pricing. It's unclear to me how much the games themselves would cost and this headset is already relatively expensive particularly since it's marketed as a group activity - just three players already runs you $1000. That's a lot of money to drop on a VR related device that has significantly more limited applications as opposed to a more generalized system such as the upcoming Apple vision, and the oculus. And number two is that you have to use a wand to manipulate the board and the pieces, and I question how accurate this will be if there are literally hundreds of pieces on the board. I could see it becoming extremely frustrating very quickly. And I'll be honest, and this is not the fault of tiltfive but I really like the weight of a pewter figurine in my hand and the lack of any haptic feedback might bother me.

JohnFen 3y ago
> That's a lot of money to drop on a VR related device that has significantly more limited applications as opposed to a more generalized system such as the upcoming Apple vision, and the oculus. This is true, but that doesn't mean there's no market for it. I'm not interested in Apple Vision, Oculus, or similar because I'm not interested in tying myself to those ecosystems. I could be interested in something like this, though. Maybe not for playing tabletop games so much, but it would be fun to explore other uses.
- ehnto 3y ago
  There are VR headsets not tied to those ecosystems. VR is a fair bit more useful and general than this device is. It's also very well supported by the open source community and is becoming a more general computing tool. I can't discount the Tilt entirely, I have never tried it, but to me it looks like one is a novelty for a niche purpose, and the other is becoming a general computing interface.
  - JohnFen 3y ago

idopmstuff 3y ago

I bought one and was really disappointed - the visual didn't feel as 3D as I expected. Their marketing videos make it look like things really feel like they're coming up out of the board, and to me it just felt like the board was sort of a TV laid flat on the table. Things were 3D only in the same sense that they are on my monitor. Also some really bad UX stuff - you have to have the glasses plugged into an Android phone or Windows PC. I have a Windows laptop, but the cord to plug in was so short I almost pulled it off the table a couple of times. I Googled, and that was a pretty common complaint that came up, which is just such a silly thing to get wrong. The controls also weren't that good - when pointing sometimes it'd just lose track of my controller. I tried with a few games and never had a particularly good experience. Overall, this was one of those things where the marketing made it feel like I should expect a magical experience, and the reality was very disappointing. Thankfully, they have a return policy - it's buried in their site and confusingly worded, but I was able to ship the thing back to them and get a refund.

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
> Their marketing videos make it look like things really feel like they're coming up out of the board, and to me it just felt like the board was sort of a TV laid flat on the table. Things were 3D only in the same sense that they are on my monitor. You don't by any chance have an undiagnosed stereoblindness do you? The promo videos make it look like extremely classic fiducial marker positioning of 3D models. The rest is up to your eyes and brain to be able to see depth from stereo. Have you been to a 3D movie? If so did it feel like 3D to you? The only scenarios that make sense from your description of it looking the same as a computer monitor are that either you got a broken one or you personally cannot see depth from stereo. I want to add that brains are very good at hiding this. If you've never used VR or been to a 3D film, its entirely possible that you could be stereoblind and just don't know.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  I've done 3D movies, and they look as expected. I guess I'm not quite being accurate when I say it was exactly like stuff in 3D on my monitor - it did sort of look like things were 3D, but meaningfully less than what I expected. Honestly, I'm having a hard time describing it accurately, but suffice to say it was extremely underwhelming.

MegaDeKay 3y ago

I'm surprised it doesn't support Linux given Jeri's hacker background. Only Win10/11 for now, select Android devices this summer, and macOS later this year. I was about to add that one thing the marketing videos don't show is that every pair of glasses needs to be connected to its own dedicated PC. So if you had five people sitting around a board game, there would be five PC's required as well. Glad I checked first. That used to be the case but it looks like they have addressed that recently. Nice! > With our 1.3 driver update one Windows10 PC can support multiple Tilt Five Glasses. Depending on how many USB-C and USB-A ports you have on your PC, you may need a powered hub to provide enough power and data bandwidth to run more than two Tilt Five Glasses. https://www.tiltfive.com/faqs https://www.tiltfive.com/faqs

jgennis 3y ago
We do have "unofficial" Linux support that you can download at: https://docs.tiltfive.com/t5_release_notes_19ii.html https://docs.tiltfive.com/t5_release_notes_19ii.html We can't promise to prioritize issues found in it, but we do use Linux for a lot of our internal development. We're targeting Ubuntu, but I don't think there's anything that would preclude getting it working on another distro.

iblaine 3y ago

I saw the kickstarted version of this at a maker fairy and was blown away. The product was great for what it did.

LarsDu88 3y ago

It took many years, and the product is starting to look dated in 2023, but kudos to Jeri Ellsworth for finally executing on this.

zfxfr 3y ago

I had the occasion to try it at Revision 2023 (a demoparty). The demo was a missile game (for those interested you can watch it here : https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2023/revision23/game/recube_neon_command_video_and_release_file.7z https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2023/revision23/game/re... ) It was indeed fun to try but I have played similar games on my Oculus Quest and the experience on Quest (or any other similar headsets ) is much more immersive. Now I just discover the price : 359USD without shipping cost. I must say I find it quite expensive. At this price I rather buy a Quest 2 or wait for the Quest 3 wich will offer full Mixed Reality capability.

ActionAndo 3y ago

I enjoy my Tilt Five so far. I don't understand some of the other commenters saying that the 3D visualization was subpar; everyone to whom I have shown the simple Geometry demo was really impressed! I bought it to develop content in Unreal for some AR fun; but the Unreal SDK plugin doesn't seem to be a top priority for them. My main complaint thus far is that I shelled out a lot of extra dough for the package that included THREE HEADSETS! Whoa! THREE headsets that you can plug in locally, so you can enjoy it with friends! But then very few, if any, apps for TIlt Five supported local AR multiplayer. Maybe that has changed in the past month or so. I need to dive back in to it. I think it's an expensive novelty that will have an interesting place in the museum of XR development.

ilovecurl 3y ago

This "tech" does not create holograms. I'm tired of folks misusing the term.