Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/723195
18 The PCB Magazine • September 2016 and feel? Smell? Taste? Anything that we can imagine may be possible and most will happen. Right now, as of the last few months we have the following commercially available: The VR Oculus Rift is the unit that perhaps did most to kick start and commercialize this technology. This unit requires a relatively high- power PC and the cost for just the headset is in the $600 range. The experience while using one is amazing and, as each eye gets its own HD screen, the experience is very real—extremely so. So real that some get ill or become frightened when using it. A second unit, the HTC Vive, has added some AR features to its VR capabilities in that you can walk around within the limits of a space that you set and when you try to walk past this "safe space" you approach a transparent wall that warns you that you are exceeding the space limitations you have set. Microsoft has set up an HTC Vive demo at many of its stores. You can walk the ocean bottom and greet very real sea creatures, you can fight space aliens and you can paint and sculpture in 3D. The Vive is also just available and it seems to be modestly more ca - pable than the Oculus Rift, but its cost is a few hundred dollars more and it also requires a beast of a PC. If you have access to a Microsoft store go and do the demo, you will be amazed. It is so real that you will have to sign an agreement stating that you accept full responsibility—I guess that is just in case the whale you encounter at the bot - tom of the ocean eats you. At the other end of the spectrum is the very low-priced but interesting and actually use- ful Google Cardboard, a cardboard box shaped like a headset that you assemble and insert your smart phone into (with limitations as to type and size) and experience games as well as a num- ber of other apps with more on the way. You can use Google Earth with it and fly anywhere, you can view videos on your phone in a virtual huge screen and more. While the Google cardboard costs under $30 (about $60 if you want to get a sturdier plastic version) you will need a relatively expensive smartphone. Similar, but more capable, is the slightly higher but still very reasonably priced Sam - sung Galaxy Gear VR. This unit is a very capable VR viewer that holds one of the newer Galaxy smartphones. It is really fun to use but neither the Galaxy VR nor the Google cardboard come anywhere near the experience you would have with more expensive and far more capable HTC Vive or Oculus Rift units. Still, inexpensive and easy to use, a good start for those interested. So what does the near future hold, not 10 to 20 years out, but just a few years away? We are on the verge of being able to use a full step up in the VR/AR universe. In my opinion we are about to go from B&W silent films to widescreen color stereo, from the early 1900s to the turn of the last century when comparing VR to movies. Microsoft has announced the availability of the first developers' version of the HoloLens. This potential beast is the first commercially available mixed reality unit. Mixed reality combines the DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES—VR, AR AND STAR TREK