With Depth-VR, a Chinese startup wants to bring 3D and motion detection for cheap into gaming

A Chinese startup is working on a gadget that will bring an immersive, 3D experience to gaming for a very low price – for less than US$70. The Beijing-based team is developing Depth-VR, which consists of a motion detector that sits atop your computer screen while the user wears a pair of techy 3D glasses (pictured above).

It’s a bit like Oculus Rift meets Leap Motion, because the motion detector can turn gestures into actions in a game, as seen below in an early prototype being used with Fruit Ninja. But it’s not truly Oculus-style virtual reality – it’s basically just glorified 3D. That’s part of what allows it to be so cheap.

By the admission of the Depth-VR team, the depth of field achieved is more like the ‘parallax effect’ seen in Apple’s iOS 7, with a bit of hologram voodoo thrown in. Here’s how it looks in a test game:

The Depth-VR gadget allows you to move around in a natural way to see an object from a different perspective:

And here’s some 3D fruit slashing action:

See: China has 100 million brain-damaged online gamers: study

Gearing up for Kickstarter

After soliciting feedback from the public at MakerFaire Shenzhen in China – as well as from gamers around the world in places like the Unity3D forums – the team is working on creating a Kickstarter campaign for the gadget in July or August, according to founder Li Jin in conversation with Chinese tech blog 36Kr. He also confirmed the plan for a low price.