The Pinć iPhone case can strap to your face to provide a smart virtual reality experience, complete with hand tracking for interacting with a VR interface.
We’ve been promised that Virtual Reality would become a household product for decades, but 2015 is set to be the year that the technology really takes off. One contender vying for a slice of the action, against big guns such as Oculus Rift, is Pinć – a cheerful looking VR visor from Cordon which turns your shiny new iPhone 6 into a full-on immersive experience, complete with hand tracking tech.
The device is, in simple terms, just a gussied-up iPhone case which you can wear on your head. In a neat and deliciously techy twist, the Pinć is manufactured using 3D printers and the company aims to make the headset easily attainable. Considering how expensive these VR goggles can be (with the exception of Google Cardboard and the £25 Archos headset), that’s good news all round.
Once you strap the Pinć on, it becomes more than the simple affair it first appears though. It makes use of the iPhone’s cameras to offer an immersive augmented reality, complete with hand tracking via a pair of LED-studed rings that you wear on your forefingers. The user is then presented with a full-on VR interface, which can be used to type on a virtual keyboard, fiddle with social networks, respond to messages or watch YouTube videos.
By shifting the VR focus from gaming, the Pinć is suddenly an attractive prospect for a technology which hasn’t, so far, been adopted by the masses. Whether it will make it to the big-time is anyone’s guess, but fresh ideas and a manageable RRP are a great place to start, and considering the visor’s still in the development phase, it definitely looks promising.
At the moment you can pre-order Pinć for $99 Canadian dollars, which amounts to around £55, and you can also wade in and back the visor on IndieGoGo too, to help the project make the jump from natty concept to real deal.
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