We’ve all been there before. A telltale knock comes at your door when there has suspiciously been no pizza or Chinese ordered. You open the door to be greeted by either a beaming youth in a pressed shirt and tie, or a grunting college student that reeks of “medicine” and won’t stop babbling about something called fracking. At the end of either conversation, that you try to keep as brief as possible, both envoys are sure to leave you with a brochure, tract, or flyer to consider. Evangelism of any kind always goes hand in hand with a portable, sharable visual aid and now the VR community has one of its own: the ‘SmartVR’ viewer.
https://youtu.be/yk70gXTciPk
SmartVR is a collapsible, lightweight VR viewing system from DODOCase – a longtime manufacturer of smartphone and tablet accessories. SmartVR is far from the only attempt to create a cheap-and-simple VR headset but DODOCase’s CEO Craig Dalton is hoping quality sets it apart. The kit costs around $40 and is expected to ship in June.
“We want this to be a tool not a toy,” Dalton said over the phone. “Durability plays into that. The systems have Aluminum for strength and the major material we’re using to build them is glass-filled nylon. We made the decision to include side panels to prevent light leakage, and the cover itself has a magnet on it that feels really solid and kind of snaps in place….The most important thing is that our lenses are incredibly high quality…much more so than the super-lightweight viewers that are more toys than anything else.”
Dalton explains that his first ambition for this product is to allow traveling entrepreneurs the chance to easily and effectively demo their experiences wherever and whenever they might find themselves. His second ideal scenario is to create a system powerful and portable enough to create spur-of-the-moment VR engagement.
“In order for VR to grow exponentially and quickly it needs to be shared,” Dalton said. “SmartVR can be thrown in a bag with keys and everything and it would not be damaged.”
[gfycat data_id=”InsecureHatefulArrowana”]
SmartVR is currently accepting pre-orders on IndieGoGo. The system costs $39.95 and Dalton explains that the first batch of orders should ship sometime around June.
