A radical new approach to 6-DoF MR and VR powered by your smartphone. Includes two fully-tracked controllers and a Unity plugin. Now including upgraded “active” controllers!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
In conversation with Head of ZapBox, Simon Taylor
over 3 years ago
– Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 01:12:27 PM
Happy Friday ZapBoxers!
This week our Senior Video Content Creator Matt Scott (the man behind all our awesome all-new ZapBox videos) had an in-depth chat with the founding father of ZapBox himself, Simon Taylor.
They covered everything from how it all began, to our future content plans with all the technical goodness in between:
Thank you again for all your support, enthusiasm and questions and we look forward to speaking to you again soon!
-Team ZapBox
Week 2 Update
over 3 years ago
– Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 02:53:03 AM
Hi ZapBoxers,
Exciting news, thanks to all of you we are nearly halfway there and over 50% funded (56% to be exact)! We want to thank everyone who has already pledged to support the project, we still have a little way to go so remember to share the campaign with anyone else you think might be interested so we can all make all-new ZapBox a reality!
Planting trees with all-new ZapBox
We are delighted to announce our new partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects and that we’ll be joining a growing community of worldwide businesses, big and small, all committed to building a more sustainable world.
So from now on, for every ZapWorks subscription or all-new ZapBox MR headset we sell we’ve committed to planting a tree with Eden Reforestation Projects.
We are very excited to say that the first 2,500 Zappar trees have already been committed against your all-new ZapBox Kickstarter backer orders as well as ZapWorks plans for October.
Tabletop gaming with all-new ZapBox
Alongside, the more educational and practical use cases of the tech, all-new ZapBox also provides amazing collaborative gaming experiences.
Take tabletop gaming to the next level with our tower defence game where you and friends must defend your base from an endless wave of attacks from enemy forces by deploying defences along their path.
That’s it for now ZapBoxers. Thanks for all the support and we look forward to sharing more with you soon.
-Team ZapBox
All-new ZapBox Live Discussion: Watch Now
over 3 years ago
– Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 11:23:10 AM
Hey there ZapBoxers!
Great news - you can now watch the recording of our all-new ZapBox live discussion:
If you have any questions about the session itself or all-new ZapBox please drop them in the comments section and we will get them answered for you :)
We hope you enjoy!
- Team ZapBox
Week One Update
over 3 years ago
– Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 04:38:08 PM
Hi ZapBoxers,
So what an exciting first week of the campaign we’ve had! We’ve passed the 350 mark for backers, and are closing in on 50% funded. Thanks so much to everyone who has already pledged their support to the project, it means so much to us.
We’ve also loved reading everything people are saying about ZapBox both on social media and in some of the news coverage we’ve picked up - it’s amazing to have others share our excitement about the possibilities that ZapBox opens up for interactive 6-DoF XR content at such an accessible price-point. We’ve added some of our favourite quotes from the coverage, as well as links to the articles, to the main project story page for you to check out.
Apple’s iPhone 12 Verdict: Great devices for ZapBox!
Apple held their launch event for the iPhone 12 yesterday, and we’re pleased to say from the details we have seen that all of the models look like they will be great devices for ZapBox.
As usual there’s a bump in CPU and GPU performance which will ensure a smooth ZapBox experience even with more complex and detailed content, and they’re all lighter than the previous versions so will be even more comfortable on your head.
The screen resolution of the base iPhone 12 has been increased significantly from the base iPhone 11, and now offers 460 ppi (pixels per inch) compared to the 326 ppi of the iPhone 11. This is a significant difference that should offer a noticeable increase in clarity for ZapBox content.
All of the iPhone 12 variants include an ultra-wide camera which is likely to remove the need to use the camera adapter on these devices, so getting started with ZapBox will be really quick and easy.
The model that has us particularly intrigued is the iPhone 12 mini. Along with being the cheapest (although clearly still not a budget device at $699/£699...), it also packs the highest density screen at 476 ppi, the ultra-wide camera, and offers the same CPU and GPU as the rest of the lineup. At just 133g this is the lightest flagship-performance iPhone for quite a while so we would expect this to be ultra-comfortable with ZapBox.
The iPhone 12 Pro is the other interesting model worthy of a mention, as it brings with it the LiDAR sensor that promises accurate real-time depth maps. We’d really need to experiment with this to see whether we could use that data to enhance ZapBox, but from the initial information we have seen it appears the field-of-view is sufficient to cover the standard “wide” camera field-of-view, but not the ultra-wide camera we will be using, so we may not have full-frame depth map coverage. It will still be interesting to get hold of a device to experiment!
At the top end of the scale, the iPhone 12 Pro Max also has the LiDAR sensor and should still work well for ZapBox, but is pushing up towards the height and weight limits that we’d recommend for an ideal ZapBox device.
We’ll get an iPhone 12 mini on pre-order and report back here to see if it is as good in practice as it appears on paper.
We recruit our youngest ZapBoxer yet!
We’d love to show you some random people reacting to ZapBox for the first time, but in the age of a global pandemic it’s not the socially responsible thing to do to approach people on the street and ask them to place some random-looking contraption on their heads!
However that hasn’t stopped our CEO Caspar as “guardian of the precious prototype” from having a bit of ZapBox fun at home.
Here’s Caspar’s daughter Isla trying out all-new ZapBox for the first time:
And finally, we had a question from backer David Zucker on the comments page about whether ZapBox would work for VR cinema apps such as Cmoar.
Cmoar isn’t something we’d seen before, but it allows watching videos in a virtual cinema environment, and looks a little something like this:
We have no idea why the cinema is empty, this is high-quality content!
Caspar gave this app a try too and found it worked really nicely on the ZapBox headset, the FOV was large enough to have the entire screen and some of the environment in view. To answer David’s question fully we’re not currently planning to make any sort of official VR shades to block off the peripheral vision, but for the full cinematic experience you can always just dim the lights and eat loads of popcorn…
You can join Simon Taylor (Co-founder and Chief Research & Development Officer, Zappar), Caspar Thykier (Co-founder and CEO, Zappar) and Steven Spong (Industrial Design Consultant & MD of Runnerfly) as they discuss…
The journey so far - from ideation to Kickstarter launch.
What makes all-new ZapBox different?
How you can get involved in all-new ZapBox
What it all means for the future of affordable Mixed Reality
There will of course be a Q&A session so we encourage all of you who have any questions at all to join us and find out more!
If you aren't able to make our discussion but have a question you would like the panel to answer please put it in the comments section and we will look at them on Friday. We will also be hosting the recorded stream here after the session for anyone who’s missed it.
