Queen Guitarist Brian May is releasing a £25 VR headset
Party owl the time
Brian May is a talented guy. He was the guitarist for Queen, an astrophysicist and now, apparently, he's the designer of a £25 VR smartphone viewer dubbed Owl VR.
The plastic kit allows users to view 3d images and footage on their smartphone while also allowing users to have access to their handset's controls at all times.
It's not really a headset in the classic sense, consisting of a flat-packed plastic frame that you can lock into shape with a pair of optical lenses at one side and a cardboard-backed magnetic strip at the other. It won't attach to your face and it doesn't enclose the phone.
The phone is held in place with a sticky magnetic card, which leaves the phone's outputs free for charging or headphones, but should hold any model of smartphone in place.
The frame is fully collapsible and users will be able to adjust the focus to suit them best using the slider on the side. The magnetic card is removable, although I can't think of many situations that'll call for an emergency magnetic card.
At the launch event in London, May said: "The reason I created the Owl was to recreate Victorian stereoscopy. People get fatigued very quickly with VR devices, they get frustrated that they can't reach their phone to get to their controls and they get sweaty with the eyepieces so I quickly realised that, in some ways, this was a better way of viewing virtual reality."
Seems like Brian May is quite the VRNaut, doesn't it?