This Canadian Company Wants To Make a VR Headset Out of Your iPhone

My body is in Metatecture's street-level Toronto office, but the iPad Mini strapped to my face is teleporting me all around the city and beyond with the Retina screen's crystal clarity. There's something humbling about strapping an iPad to your face, but there's nothing awkward weighing me down; no booting periods or wires holding me back. I'm here, but I'm there. This is virtual reality.

The head-tracking works exactly as it should, but I feel much more free in an AirVR—Metatecture's new portable headset that helps turn your iPad or iPhone into your own VR system. The experience is comparable to that of the Oculus Rift, which is easily the most popular VR device still not technically on the market.

Ever since Facebook's acquisition of Oculus Rift six months ago, the race between tech giants to bring virtual reality to the masses has kicked into hyperdrive. With new competitors like Samsung and Sony entering the game, VR technology seems poised to become something anyone can tap from the comfort of their living room. Notably absent from the conversation? Apple.

That's where the AirVR, the latest offering from Metatecture, comes in. AirVR headsets are simple, and take advantage of technology millions of people already have—iPad Minis and iPhones—to transform it into a near-pocket sized VR headset.

"We only came up with the idea six months ago, and have only seriously been working on it for the last month," Steve Reaume, one of Metatecture's founders, told me during a recent visit to the company's cramped lab.

"We were trying to do a full room Oculus experience with the development kit and it was just impossible without having a $6,000 laptop powered and strapped to your back," Reaume said.

The team launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised a few eyebrows and got skewered a bit (you've probably got to expect that, given the strap-an-iPad-to-your-face premise). Its simplicity and the $49 price tag helped the company hit their $20,000 goal in a week.

Here's how it works: You slide your iPad or iPhone into the slot built into the AirVR, strap it to your head, and look through the VR lenses. Downloadable apps sync to your iPhone or iPad, relaying the VR images.

While the Oculus is a powerful piece of equipment, capable of sending you to a million possible virtual worlds, you have to be plugged into a computer and can't just walk away with all of the attached wiring. With AirVR, the experience is similar, but much lighter. There are no cords, no additional power is required, and no bulk. The only thing weighing me down is a simple head strap, eye mounts, and 331 grams' worth of cheap consumer electronics.

Obviously AirVR is still very much in its infancy, but there was still a slate of content for me to check out. The first test application I was shown isn't much more than a photo viewer, but it was immersive and because of the AirVR's portability it actually provides a practical application for those panoramic photos you're always compelled to take, but are impossible to showcase.

When I tried out AirVR, despite knowing full well that I was just looking at a panoramic photo plugged into an iPad, I still got a distinct feeling of vertigo looking over the Bathurst Street Bridge in Toronto—and I'm not even afraid of heights. There is a something surreal to being in two places at once, with the sense of 'being there' being even more palpable by how unobtrusive the device itself is.

Adding depth of field and an immersion isn't what most people are clamouring for in their 2D platformers, but after a few minutes using AirVR and literally being 'in the game' you realize how much easier it would be to lose hours to Angry Birds or Candy Crush with nowhere else to go. While head tracking becomes a non-factor, you really do find yourself caring if you make jumps when you can't look away.

Gaming is a huge selling point, too. While the guys at Metatecture didn't have any specific games yet tailored to their new system, literally everything that works on iOS works on AirVR. Even 2D gaming with a third-party controller feels different when it's the entirety of your experience and not just a distraction from the guy asleep next to you on the bus. It also works with AppleTV and though, as of right now, it only mirrored the VR image on screen, there is easy potential for multiplayer gaming applications using this setup.

I tried out LostWinds, a platformer that's been out since 2011, but on AirVR it felt completely new and substantial through the lenses. It no longer felt like a dated Wii port, but an entirely new immersive experience. The platfomer has a floaty quality and the 3D art style lost nothing being thrown right in my face. But then, the game does require some touchscreen elements, so I wasn't able to do much more than run around and jump for a few minutes. But the potential for a deep side scrolling experience is very much a possibility.

Edgar Wong Baxter Jr., another of Metatecture's founders, explained why the company is going after the iOS market, specifically, instead of developing its own proprietary hardware.

"If there's no installed base, there's no developers and there's no content, period," Baxter said. "The Samsung headset is cool, but it took them two months to sell 10 million Note 3s. Apple did that in a day. Frankly, there are probably more iOS devices in a one kilometre radius than there are Oculus Rifts in the entire world."

The company said its software development kits will integrate into any existing app's software, making almost everything AirVR-friendly. Initial crowd response has been a mixed bag, although Reaume said one bit of positive feedback took them by pleasant surprise.

"We got an email from this one guy who got an iPad as a gift," said Reaume. "He'd been declared legally blind, but if he turned the contrast all the way up and had the light on, he could see text. So he's been walking around holding his iPad up to his face. Using the camera we can actually turn all the contrast and everything up and maybe make it so he can see again."

With the Kickstarter secured, early backers should see their headsets before Christmas. Whether or not the public will respond to personal VR systems is still anyone's guess. AirVR has the benefit of a very low cost and it works directly with something you use every day. In the end, it really just depends on how badly you want your iPad strapped to your face, literally, as opposed to figuratively.