Facebook reality lab released a paper on “reverse passthrough VR” to help people see the real world while they are in virtual reality. The researchers at FRL developed a technique for bringing your face onto the front of a virtual reality headset so that the outer world can see it.
The term passthrough VR defines a feature that allows live video feed from a headsets camera lets the user see the real world while wearing a VR headset. FRL further reports the people surrounding someone who wears the headset cannot make eye contact, even if the wearer can see them flawlessly. Over the years passthrough, VR just had the above-mentioned definition but now it changes for the better.
Reverse passthrough VR is a new concept presented by research scientist Nathan Matsuda which demonstrates the eyes of someone wearing a headset to be seen by the outer world. FRL Chief scientist Michael Abarsh was initially skeptical about the idea, he says ” My first reaction was that it was kind of a goofy idea, a novelty at best. But I don’t tell researchers what to do, because you don’t get innovation without the freedom to try new things, and that’s a good thing because now it’s a unique idea with genuine promise.”
Two years after the initial demo the research prototype ripened well with purpose-built optics, electronics, software, and a range of supporting technologies to capture and depict realistic 3d faces. The research is a promising one but still at the experimental phase.