I'm pleased to announce that Tilt5, an augmented reality company for which I am an investor and advisor, has gone live with its kickstarter today.

Tilt5's approach to AR is quite different from the others you've seen. The glasses require you place an inexpensive sheet of retroreflector on a surface (table, wall or stand) and it can display anything in 3D where that surface is. Real world objects can then be placed on the table and mix with the virtual ones. This may seem quite limiting, it doesn't try to paint things on top of the arbitrary world like Magic Leap, but it has some big advantages because of this method:

1. The image is quite bright and vivid
2. You can cover a much larger field of view. (Other glasses tend to do only 30 to 50 degrees due to their waveguides and the illusion of reality is broken all the time.)
3. The glasses are light, large and have big lenses, so you can actually see the eyes of the person wearing them. This allows for social interaction with other wearers.

The first focus is on tabletop games. You get a magic table which can turn into anything, and you can place game pieces on it to mix with the virtual. In addition, you can play with people in other locations, all seeing the same magic table.

In the future, I think there will be interesting applications in meetings, with a group of people able to sit around a shared table and see not just the table but the other people. Good for video conferences, or playing poker, or sharing a virtual dinner.

Check out the kickstarter -- it is just on the verge of funding after less than a day!