The latest in what’s becoming an increasingly dull line of products being pushed in the virtual reality headset market is named Lucidcam and apparently people are getting very excited about it. The premise is a nice one; targeting middle-American families allowing an experience not far different from Apple’s Facetime but supposedly in 3D as long as you wear a cardboard box on your head.
Take a look at the fundraising promo video:
One brief look at the market for VR devices and you’ll see why this attempt at crowdfunding is happening now and not later. The Oculus Rift, now famously part of the Zuckerberg war chest is due for worldwide release in January, less than 60 days away. One would assume a company worth 20,000 times that of Lucid and already engaged in connecting people would already have the soccer moms and grandparents in mind, but not according to Han Jin, the visionary behind the Lucidcam.
As usual though and much the same as in other crowdfunded photography based ideas we’ve covered on Phogotraphy this latest offering to the world of tech brings us nothing new or profound. The video, presentation and hype behind it is very slick and certainly had us fooled until Grandma put a cardboard box on her head.
Guys, we like innovation, we love ideas, we think it’s fantastic when people out there with bags o’ money and fresh minds put there heads together and work on stuff. But that’s not what’s going on here. It’s a business punt bet by an angel investor who’s seen what big companies are willing to pay for forward looking startups.
Combining Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard does not make a billion dollar company.
There is no new idea, no new tech, no innovation, no ground broken. It’s not even a refinement of an original idea that Apple are so good at doing. It is, we’re sorry to say a duff from the outset. Don’t be fooled by the $62,000 already raised on Indiegogo, there’s just a lot of people out there with a lot of disposable income.
The spiel delivered offers the same typical one liners you fund in most overrated campaigns, but we particular liked Joe Hill, the VR evangelist (whatever that is) ‘s contrived wow scenes where he removes the headset and shakes his head in pure disbelief.
But hey, if you’ve got money to burn on a box that’ll stay in storage until your future grandchildren try to pawn it off as some antique relic then you should definitely fork out the $299 early bird price and maybe you might even receive the headset some time next year.
Good luck getting Granny to download the related app on her Android mobile phone though. Maybe she’d just prefer to see you in person, huh?
Related: Lumigraphe: The Worst Photography Related KickStarter of All Time.
Related: The Camera Obscura Enters Infomercial Territory
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