Gear & Gadgets —


The rock god, who also has a PhD in astrophysics, designed and patented his own stereoscope.

"There's a darkness to everything; people won't want to leave their rooms," said Brian May, an astrophysicist who also plays lead guitar in a band called Queen, as he tried on the new Owl VR headset, which he has designed himself. "But that's the way with most technologies: they bring a lot of good, but some darkness as well."

I should probably rewind a bit. Brian May, who was rocking out in Barcelona on Monday as part of the Queen + Adam Lambert world tour, on Tuesday unveiled the Owl Virtual Reality Kit. It was a fairly low-key affair, with May standing in front of about 30 (rather than 30,000) tech and media journalists at Dolby's European headquarters on Soho Square in London.

He told us about his love of stereography—the capturing and rendering of stereo images—which was initially invented by the English scientist Charles Wheatstone in 1832. Prior to Wheatstone, no-one had quite worked out why humans (or indeed other animals) had two slightly separated eyes. Wheatstone explained how, because each eye has a slightly different view of the world, the brain receives enough visual data to create the illusion of depth—an effect we call stereopsis. He then invented the first stereoscope, which kicked off the Victorian stereophotography fad.

A Zeiss stereoscope, probably from the 1950s.
Enlarge / A Zeiss stereoscope, probably from the 1950s.

In addition to being a still-actively-touring rock god and an astrophysicist (he completed his PhD at Imperial in 2007), Brian May has also cofounded the London Stereoscopic Company with Elena Vidal. Since 2008, the company has made and sold the original Owl stereoscope, plus a variety of stereo cards to be used with it. Perhaps unsurprisingly the company sells a number of Queen stereo cards—still images converted from 35mm Stereo Realist film.

And now May is gearing up to release the Owl Virtual Reality Kit. The new VR kit uses the same basic design as the original Owl, except that instead of printed stereo cards, you can now slot in your own smartphone.

In the words of Brian May himself, the mechanism is very simple: "It's basically a giant fridge magnet." There's a magnetic backplate that slots into the Owl, and then a sliver of metal that you affix to the back of your smartphone. Then, when you want to do some VR, just stick your phone to the backplate and off you go.

The Owl, in flat-pack form, with its packaging/assembly instructions.
Enlarge / The Owl, in flat-pack form, with its packaging/assembly instructions.
Sebastian Anthony
The Owl VR, which will cost £25 when it's released in mid-June, is very simple to assemble. It comes flat-packed, but with the lenses already installed. You fold the heavy-duty polypropylene plastic in two places, and then click four tabs into place—two for each fold. It's very simple to disassemble, too. One thing concerns me, though: I don't know how many times you could remove the metal plate from the back of your phone without the self-adhesive strips losing their stickiness. You might just have to leave it stuck to your phone forever.

The Owl VR, then, is a lot like Google Cardboard, but with three main differences: the Owl works with any smartphone due to its magnetic fastening, it has fully adjustable focus, and it has an open stage rather than a closed light-tight box. The latter is good in some ways—it's much more of a social experience, and it's very nice to be able to reach over and interact with your smartphone at any time—but obviously not great if you're after high-fidelity, fully immersive VR games and virtual worlds. The Owl's focus mechanism—where you physically slide the stage back and forth with your thumbs—is surprisingly effective.

"People get frustrated and fatigued very quickly with other VR devices," May said at the Owl VR launch event. "They get frustrated that they can't reach the controls on the phone and the eyepieces get sweaty... so I quickly realised, in some ways, this was a better way of viewing virtual reality."

A bunch of journalists watching Bohemian Rhapsody on the Owl VR. That's me in the middle, taking a selfie. (Check out the Ars sticker covering the Apple logo. I'm so cool.)
At the event we were given a chance to watch Google's VR rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody on the Owl. It was okay; not mind-blowing. At the end of the VR experience some credits rolled up the screen. "Google didn't credit Queen," said May with a thin smile. "They credited all the animators and artists, but not us." When asked about which Queen experience he would most like to share with the world in VR, May quickly responded with "Buckingham Palace," referring to the time he played God Save the Queen standing atop the palace for the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002.

May also briefly mentioned the Owl Lite, a cut-down version of the Owl which is simply two lenses in a piece of plastic—somewhat like a pair of spectacles—that could be distributed cheaply to schools. There are a lot of cheap camera apps for iOS and Android that let you easily create stereoscopic images for viewing with the Owl.

Finally, May closed out the gig with some deep musings. "Ultimately VR will change the world, because you'll be able to build everything that you love and cherish in the virtual world. You'll feel like you can touch and hear and interact with them. VR could advance to the point where you feel a tug, a sort of nostalgia, a feeling that you've lost something, because you've fallen in love with the virtual world. Eventually, I think people won't want to come out."

You can pre-order the Owl VR Kit now for £25. Shipments are scheduled to commence in mid-June. Queen + Adam Lambert are touring Europe in May and June.

Listing image by Pocket-lint

You must to comment.