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Shameless plug - we recently released our $80 headset with support for spatial videos. It's a plastic headset, with two bluetooth controllers, that you put your

Shameless plug - we recently released our $80 headset with support for spatial videos. It's a plastic headset, with two bluetooth controllers, that you put your phone into 'Google Cardboard style'. No need to wait for Vision Pro :-) https://www.zappar.com/zapbox/ https://www.zappar.com/zapbox/

peblos 3y ago
This looks great! Any plans to ship to Australia?
- macguillicuddy 3y ago
  Thanks :-D Yes - our Gen 2 model ships internationally and our site hasn't quite been updated yet. If you drop us a message at support@zappar.com we can get one to you.
  - lancewiggs 3y ago
    Good on you for the product. Yes please update the site. I want to see if the ability to take spatial videos actually appears in local (NZ) iOS* before committing, and sending emails is a right pain versus a buy-now button "Some features may not be available in all regions...." is appearing on my update text.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
Love to get just the headset (sans Bluetooth controllers).
- macguillicuddy 3y ago
  Yeah we've been thinking about a headset-only version too :-) The advantage of the controllers is they have 'Quest compatible' inputs - so content built for Quest can be ported with minimal fuss. That said there's many use cases that don't need the controllers, or for which hand tracking is sufficient, so we're definitely looking into it!
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    I'm just interested in stereo photography/video.
wodenokoto 3y ago
I think I saw this on a instagram reel recommendation. Thought it was some sort of Ali express junk. Now seeing it here, it feels like a real product all of a sudden!
- macguillicuddy 3y ago
  Ha I can promise it's a real product - designed with <3 in London!
covercash 3y ago
Does all content have to be played back through your app or can it play a 3D video on YouTube or the Plex/Emby apps?
- macguillicuddy 3y ago
  The app we provide allows you to view video (including spatial video) from your Photos library, but any app with a 'Google Cardboard' mode (showing left eye content on the left of the screen and right on the right) should work. We are looking at supporting other sources in our app but in some cases there are legal constraints, e.g. Google don't allow custom players to play YouTube videos.
theonlybutlet 3y ago
Looks impressive in the video on your website. Is the video passthrough offset to the right/left due to the camera location or are you able to correct that in app (asking due to the open peripheral vision).
- macguillicuddy 3y ago
  Thank you! We do correct for this in the app - it's quite a complicated process because we only have a single 'monocular' camera image which we have to compose with 3D content. We use some tricks to render the camera in a way that feels comfortable with the content. We consider the camera passthrough to compete very favourably with Quest 3 / Pro and have also received independent feedback to say so, primarily because it's high resolution and high framerate (60 fps while we believe the Quest passthrough is only 30).
  - locallyidle36 3y ago
    To clarify, are users able to perceive depth from the video passthrough? I'd imagine you'd need to adapt that monocular video into a stereoscopic 3d scene using lidar/etc. Or is it more of other tricks that make the 2D passthrough comfortable when viewed with the 3D AR content?
    - tb100 3y ago
      Hi - I'm Simon, and I've been leading the development on the low-level runtime bits for Zapbox. We synthesise the views for the left and right eyes by projecting the camera image onto some assumed world geometry. Our 6-DoF experiences are generally designed for a table-top setting, and we project the camera onto an infinite plane on that table surface (there's a physical origin marker to define the origin of the space for the 6-DoF experiences). There's also a plane parallel to the device a few meters in the distance (to avoid a "horizon"). Sounds simple but for table-top experiences like viewing 3D models on a table it does give a convincing stereo effect - things like shadows from the model on the table just look right. Combined with the really low-latency display pipeline[1], the nice camera (1440x1080p @ 60fps), and the direct peripheral view of the real world thanks to the headset design gives a really pretty comfortable MR experience. The next job will be improving the quality of the world geometry so that camera reprojection works better for static parts of the scene. We might try something live with lidar but for most rooms an offline process (or even manual placement and scaling of planes for walls / floors) would already provide a decent improvement. The hardest part is foreground objects - hands, controllers, other people. Some scheme to detect and segment out those foreground bits and reproject them separately using an estimated depth map (whilst infilling the background layer for the static world) would be needed there. Complex in general but for things with known geometry ie controllers, it seems like something we should be able to do. What's hopefully clear is that we're pushing to make the headset MR experience using your phone the best it can possibly be, given the limitations imposed by the hardware such as camera positioning. We're in a pretty good place already but there are definitely more improvements to come :) [1] As this is HN, I can say a bit more technical stuff about the display pipeline... We have an iOS implementation for async timewarp - we've been able to circumvent the usual queuing of frames that happens on iOS to implement a late warp render just 3ms before a new frame starts scanning out. That means we can get a really recent camera frame (on iOS frames are delivered to the app around 20ms after capture) and also apply rotational reprojection for any movement since the frame was captured. Reprojecting for predicted translation at display time is on the roadmap too which should remove the last bit of noticeable latency when moving.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
Very cool, I bookmarked your site for when I update to an iPhone 15
- macguillicuddy 3y ago
  Thank you! The headset is supported on iPhone 11 and later - it's just the capture of spatial video that's only supported on the iPhone 15 Pro/Max. In case that helps with your purchasing decision ;-D
ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
Insane. simple, elegant, succinctly explained, def. has a niche in the market, and affordable. kudos to you. Just annoyed I didn't think of it of and had the capacity to execute on something like this. P.S.: If support for unity AR development is robust enough, I'd highly encourage you to aggressively pitch this to educational institutions. One major pain point is how challenging it is to provide a solution at scale to have students building in VR. A solution to be able to spend a modest amount of money, on something that is super robust, that leverages tech all the students have, and that I could get a dozen of for the price of two of the alternatives, would be a game changer.
- macguillicuddy 3y ago
  Those are very kind words - thank you! It's been a labour of love for us over the last few years but we're at a point where this product really works now and so it's great to see the positive response. That's a really interesting point re education. I know the team here are very much looking at that vertical and will pass on your note. One of things that's nice about Zapbox is that the controller inputs are Quest-compatible, so educational content built for Quest should be easy to port, allowing for use cases where there are a small number of higher-cost headsets used in tandem with a larger number of Zapboxes.
  - ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
    For sure -- and I'd further emphasize that its a particular environment where the "downsides" of this approach would be strengths. For instance, a nearby school had a dozen quests for sporadic activities, but the fact that you can't easily peak at what the students were engaged in was a problem... well, with this, you can certainly do that! It's a space where I suspect the cost/ease/simplicity to fidelity tradeoff will be especially welcomed. Good luck with the product!
    - macguillicuddy 3y ago
      Ha yeah there's surprising value to the 'over the shoulder' feature :-D Thank you!
ATMLOTTOBEER 3y ago
>demo showing product in use >I can actually buy it Is this 2006

peblos 3y ago

This looks great! Any plans to ship to Australia?

macguillicuddy 3y ago
Thanks :-D Yes - our Gen 2 model ships internationally and our site hasn't quite been updated yet. If you drop us a message at support@zappar.com we can get one to you.
- lancewiggs 3y ago
  Good on you for the product. Yes please update the site. I want to see if the ability to take spatial videos actually appears in local (NZ) iOS* before committing, and sending emails is a right pain versus a buy-now button "Some features may not be available in all regions...." is appearing on my update text.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

Love to get just the headset (sans Bluetooth controllers).

macguillicuddy 3y ago
Yeah we've been thinking about a headset-only version too :-) The advantage of the controllers is they have 'Quest compatible' inputs - so content built for Quest can be ported with minimal fuss. That said there's many use cases that don't need the controllers, or for which hand tracking is sufficient, so we're definitely looking into it!
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  I'm just interested in stereo photography/video.

wodenokoto 3y ago

I think I saw this on a instagram reel recommendation. Thought it was some sort of Ali express junk. Now seeing it here, it feels like a real product all of a sudden!

macguillicuddy 3y ago
Ha I can promise it's a real product - designed with <3 in London!

covercash 3y ago

Does all content have to be played back through your app or can it play a 3D video on YouTube or the Plex/Emby apps?

macguillicuddy 3y ago
The app we provide allows you to view video (including spatial video) from your Photos library, but any app with a 'Google Cardboard' mode (showing left eye content on the left of the screen and right on the right) should work. We are looking at supporting other sources in our app but in some cases there are legal constraints, e.g. Google don't allow custom players to play YouTube videos.

theonlybutlet 3y ago

Looks impressive in the video on your website. Is the video passthrough offset to the right/left due to the camera location or are you able to correct that in app (asking due to the open peripheral vision).

macguillicuddy 3y ago
Thank you! We do correct for this in the app - it's quite a complicated process because we only have a single 'monocular' camera image which we have to compose with 3D content. We use some tricks to render the camera in a way that feels comfortable with the content. We consider the camera passthrough to compete very favourably with Quest 3 / Pro and have also received independent feedback to say so, primarily because it's high resolution and high framerate (60 fps while we believe the Quest passthrough is only 30).
- locallyidle36 3y ago
  To clarify, are users able to perceive depth from the video passthrough? I'd imagine you'd need to adapt that monocular video into a stereoscopic 3d scene using lidar/etc. Or is it more of other tricks that make the 2D passthrough comfortable when viewed with the 3D AR content?
  - tb100 3y ago
    Hi - I'm Simon, and I've been leading the development on the low-level runtime bits for Zapbox. We synthesise the views for the left and right eyes by projecting the camera image onto some assumed world geometry. Our 6-DoF experiences are generally designed for a table-top setting, and we project the camera onto an infinite plane on that table surface (there's a physical origin marker to define the origin of the space for the 6-DoF experiences). There's also a plane parallel to the device a few meters in the distance (to avoid a "horizon"). Sounds simple but for table-top experiences like viewing 3D models on a table it does give a convincing stereo effect - things like shadows from the model on the table just look right. Combined with the really low-latency display pipeline[1], the nice camera (1440x1080p @ 60fps), and the direct peripheral view of the real world thanks to the headset design gives a really pretty comfortable MR experience. The next job will be improving the quality of the world geometry so that camera reprojection works better for static parts of the scene. We might try something live with lidar but for most rooms an offline process (or even manual placement and scaling of planes for walls / floors) would already provide a decent improvement. The hardest part is foreground objects - hands, controllers, other people. Some scheme to detect and segment out those foreground bits and reproject them separately using an estimated depth map (whilst infilling the background layer for the static world) would be needed there. Complex in general but for things with known geometry ie controllers, it seems like something we should be able to do. What's hopefully clear is that we're pushing to make the headset MR experience using your phone the best it can possibly be, given the limitations imposed by the hardware such as camera positioning. We're in a pretty good place already but there are definitely more improvements to come :) [1] As this is HN, I can say a bit more technical stuff about the display pipeline... We have an iOS implementation for async timewarp - we've been able to circumvent the usual queuing of frames that happens on iOS to implement a late warp render just 3ms before a new frame starts scanning out. That means we can get a really recent camera frame (on iOS frames are delivered to the app around 20ms after capture) and also apply rotational reprojection for any movement since the frame was captured. Reprojecting for predicted translation at display time is on the roadmap too which should remove the last bit of noticeable latency when moving.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

Very cool, I bookmarked your site for when I update to an iPhone 15

macguillicuddy 3y ago
Thank you! The headset is supported on iPhone 11 and later - it's just the capture of spatial video that's only supported on the iPhone 15 Pro/Max. In case that helps with your purchasing decision ;-D

ChicagoBoy11 3y ago

Insane. simple, elegant, succinctly explained, def. has a niche in the market, and affordable. kudos to you. Just annoyed I didn't think of it of and had the capacity to execute on something like this. P.S.: If support for unity AR development is robust enough, I'd highly encourage you to aggressively pitch this to educational institutions. One major pain point is how challenging it is to provide a solution at scale to have students building in VR. A solution to be able to spend a modest amount of money, on something that is super robust, that leverages tech all the students have, and that I could get a dozen of for the price of two of the alternatives, would be a game changer.

macguillicuddy 3y ago
Those are very kind words - thank you! It's been a labour of love for us over the last few years but we're at a point where this product really works now and so it's great to see the positive response. That's a really interesting point re education. I know the team here are very much looking at that vertical and will pass on your note. One of things that's nice about Zapbox is that the controller inputs are Quest-compatible, so educational content built for Quest should be easy to port, allowing for use cases where there are a small number of higher-cost headsets used in tandem with a larger number of Zapboxes.
- ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
  For sure -- and I'd further emphasize that its a particular environment where the "downsides" of this approach would be strengths. For instance, a nearby school had a dozen quests for sporadic activities, but the fact that you can't easily peak at what the students were engaged in was a problem... well, with this, you can certainly do that! It's a space where I suspect the cost/ease/simplicity to fidelity tradeoff will be especially welcomed. Good luck with the product!
  - macguillicuddy 3y ago
    Ha yeah there's surprising value to the 'over the shoulder' feature :-D Thank you!

ATMLOTTOBEER 3y ago

>demo showing product in use >I can actually buy it Is this 2006