Tilt Five AR Gaming Glasses Review! 

Hopefully they'll make it compatible with CAD. This could be really cool in the interior design, cabinet, remodel, and architecture worlds

T5 fan here. Great review. You crammed a lot of hard-to-communicate info in, and your opinions and suggestions are, as I expected, very fair and well argued. Some factual corrections for people who read RU-vid comments(?): The square LE board has been offered for sale separately for a few days (probably after this was filmed), but the board included with new kits is the XE shown in the video, rectangular with the extra bit on the back. You can extend the active area with silver retroreflective fabric, but not with RR paint or beads. RR paint does the same thing as silver fabric, but much less efficiently, and it would be too dim to be worth it. The glasses transmit about 40% of the light from the real world, just the same as a set of polarized sunglasses or theater polarizer glasses. No polarizer can theoretically pass more than 50% of unpolarized light, and real ones absorb another 10% in practice. The 85% number (or 15% loss) that T5 talks about is the amount of *light sent out* that passes back through the lens. This is by contrast with other optical AR systems that struggle for brightness because they have to pump out and throw away 80-90% of their light in their optics chain. There is absolutely a significant limit to the vertical FOV, but the cutoff you discussed, at the top particularly, can be an artifact of bad vertical position and angling due to the single default nosepiece supplied. Now that doesn't actually help you solve your problem; they ran into manufacturing difficulties molding the nosepiece variety pack in summer 2022 and there's been no serious word since then. You shouldn't have to, but you could bust out some Sugru...

Jerry Ellsworth is a brilliant engineer and she's always created amazing UI. Good review.

Imagine a tabletop that is 6x6 feet. That would be so cool

This would be perfect for virtual pinball tables. Also imagine a cockpit setup with retrorelfective sheets instead of windows.... you can see all your controls with your actual eyes. no passthrough required.

I don't know if I can say this... But I work on one of the games he show... So happy to see my work out in the wild

I'm glad to see you giving a very honest review. I have the Tilt Five (with the extended board). The other negative which you didn't mention, is that because the board folds up, you get thin black lines, where the projected image can't reflect. In most games it's not an issue, but in some - for me Figmin - the act of focusing your eyes makes those black lines cross over. I find it very distracting. But you have to take it for what it was invented for. That's sitting with friends around a table. I thought the speakers were terrible, but then I thought "you need to be able to speak to people beside you". There is definitely a sweet spot to getting the image very bright and very sharp. You have to sit pretty close to the board. The images are sometimes jerky, but T5 are releasing new drivers, and they're working on it all the time. Gabe Newell released a video saying "it's far more compelling than I thought it would be" and he's contacted developers for it. So at this stage, it's up to us - the users - to support what is a very small team, with limited resources and a very tight budget. What I've noticed about Tilt Five, is that every time I go back to it, I like it that little bit more. It's cute and good fun. It's a bit more of a gentle gaming experience..... I like your idea of not having to use the PC when you first turn it on. But you know? How lazy are we going to be? You can see your entire environment perfectly clearly, so just look at your pc and launch a game. And "setting the board up" - it's designed to be an experience for "game night", it takes roughly 10 seconds to unfold the board. But I'm a lazy person, so I shamefully agree with you. It is early days with it. But they've done so well to get it this far. It's taken a very intelligent person, 12 years to work out. She's created the technology to do it. It is the first of its kind. So I think even though it's not currently what everybody would like (Jeri included) the only way we have what we do want, is to keep supporting her. It's been a number of important steps, she's finally been able to get the units produced and shipped, so now it's the time to concentrate on improving stability and performance, software, features - all that. Well done for telling the truth, even though some of those truths aren't easy to say, towards a friend. ............ Like I said, what I come away with, is that the more I play on it, the more I like it. My favourite game is the zombie demo. I like how close the exploded zombies fly up towards your face 😁 Comfort is tricky for me, but that's because I wear glasses and have a little nose. As for the price, I think considering that it's a small team that's not going to sell millions of them, it's a good price. I want a board that's rolled up, so I can get rid of the lines - even though the build quality of the board, is lovely. In fact the quality all round is really nice. Really nice design, lovely box, nice feeling sturdy plastic on the headset and the wand. I've hit the board a few times, but the wand still stands ☺️ The buttons are a bit crap, but they're more than good enough for the job. The speakers are crap, but like I said after thinking about it, they're perfect for interacting with those around you (not her fault I don't have anybody). A headphone jack would have been good, but she's had a vision and that was to play with people beside you). The fans are too loud, but I agree with you that in game they don't bother you. It's a different monster. That's what I'm saying. You have to like it for what it is. And as I say, every time I play it, I like it that little bit more. Early days, but let's support Tilt Five.

As a backer of the original castAR, really great to see this come to market. I'll be getting two.

Heck yeah! Definitely want to pick this up soon. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for your review. Because of this video I’ve taken a closer look at the device and am quite impressed. I appreciate your work.

Norm needs his own channel, love the tech side of this channel!

This is the best AR concept I've ever seen. It works because it knows itself. Jeri owns the future of AR.

I’ve been following the development of this for a few years. Jeri is a genius for sure and I’m buying this at the weekend; thanks Norm.

I'd love to see it compatible with game consoles. Especially the Nintendo Switch. If you could just plug it directly into the switch, or even better use a hub to plug multiple gasses into a switch then just play all or at least a large portion of their games would be awesome. A partnership with Nintendo or even PlayStation and XBox would really give TiltFive a great boost in the right direction. I'm loving mine so far. There is great potential for them. They just have to harness it.

For most use there is typically very little noticeable warping error. Only when the player's head translates in a sudden and unpredictable manner should an uncorrected warp error get introduced. There's a lot going on to ensure that the image remains registered and correct. The warping algorithm uses the tabletop plane equation as the depth function to reproject the image during the optical correction. Anything rendered that is above or below the plane, has a depth difference from the plane of the table that can introduce a warp error due to the parallax term arising from the height off the table and the difference between the tracked predicted view position and the correct eye position. In practice what this means is that during sudden head movements (translations not rotations) tall 3D objects can be seen to skew slightly off the vertical. Last I checked the prediction of future head poses was not finalized and this was the main tool left to mitigate this. Pixel level reprojection would be the next level solution however that requires more processing and has its own challenging artifacts (e.g. exposed de-occluded pixels behind silhouettes that need to be hallucinated or pulled from other frames). Many systems try this or some variation of it with questionable results. It's one of those frontier problems where lots of compute resources can be spent chasing diminishing returns and perhaps even make things worse before they get better depending on the tradeoffs made and the real-time power & compute resources available.

Would love to get this but they really need to nail down the multi-player aspect. I can't justify buying this for just a couple of single player marble games etc. If they had full multi-player support for games, especially D&D type games, I would buy this in a heartbeat.

This is super cool. An all-in-one HMD gaming system doesn't have to be the only way to do things. The fact that it can run on lower spec computers is a huge boon for the average person who can't afford a so-called “gaming PC” but who still want to play cool, fun, 3D games with whatever hardware they currently use. I could also see this being used at multi-genre sci-fi/gaming conventions such as Dragon Con as well as gaming stores that sell comic books or table-top games. You ought to try this out while also wearing ChromaDepth 3D glasses under the Tilt Five but over your own glasses. They pull warm colors (red, orange, yellow) to the foreground, making them appear to float off the image into real space. Green serves as a neutral middle ground color. Blue, indigo, violet are cool colors that get pushed into the background. This makes those colors look like they are deep below the image where you could reach into the display or whatever the carrier medium is to scoop up objects.

Using this to display 3d scans like with Polycam would be an awesome use case. Displaying 3D videos or possibly working with insta360 cameras somehow would be another. The virtual pinball community could have a field day with this too.

I'm a Kickstarter backer. I really like the system - so much impressive tech and hard work in there. It's very fun and novel but I haven't yet seen the really compelling apps to make it worth the setup a few days a week yet. Right now I set it up on the weekends once in a while and to show friends. But it's positioned well for that ultimate board gaming experience. I'm excited about Catan and I think perhaps a comprehensive multi-player D&D solution that really works where DMs can offer paid experiences or friend groups can regularly gather might be a great fit here. Anyway, I think it's getting there and Jerry and her team did a great job.

This combined with CAD/3D Modeling/Sculpting with hand gesture recogition would be amazing. PS also a full room with fileted corners & covered with retroreflective paint.

What a fair and balanced review!

Can finally play that chess game thing they play on the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars.

This seems like a great idea...10 years ago. LIke the bar for AR is much higher than just being restricted to a table. I hope they can fold all their R&D into a newer generation with less limitations. You can tell they put a lot of passion and love into this product.

That was great, thanks!

Great review; I feel like I've got a complete idea of what this thing is like to use 👍 Kudos to Ms Ellsworth for persevering and finally getting this thing to market.

Awesome video norm sir

Once there’s a good selection of board games with network support-so that we can have two players in one house and two others in another in a different city-and Mac or iPad support, I’ll be sold.

I think a mini drive in theater as a media player(kind of like Bigscreen VR) would be fun. You could watch a movie and have a bunch of tiny cars pulling in out of the drive-in.

These are so versatile. 1 AR DnD or any tabletop game with friends 2 AR presentation of any type that involves 3D anything, just put the screen on the wall 3 See virtual art pieces in a museum or art gallery 4 AR museum guides 5 In theater you could make the audience wear these to show CGI stuff, CGI in theater is possible with these!!! 6 in schools for like everything, virtual dissections finally etc just from the top of my head, anyone else have other ideas?

This has been so long in the making. I remember watching the first previews while holding my new born daughter thinking that she might never play a physical board game. I really hope that they can do some work to bring the initial cost down; it's a little steep at the moment, especially with the fairly limited catalog.

They need to accelerate the development of this into a local tabletop game hub. Single player AR is cool, but what's great is multiplayer AR with each player seeing their private cards/stash in hand while sharing a common table, just like a physical board game. This is what's unique about the tech - each player having their own private view - over say tablet gaming where everything's seen by everyone always.

Blimey, I remember when Jeri Ellsworth first talked about this tech 10 years ago!

This is so cool. I want hand detection! Come on future, get here now!

Tilt Five is truly amazing. Great to see it covered by Tested.

i really like your shirt, it would be cool to have one that looks like a road map of silicon valley with all the tech companies are end points on the circuit.

Norm, that's cooling "fan", singular. The other grille is just a passive exhaust port. Also, you may be seeing the black bar cutoff at the top because you didn't change your board type in the driver configuration utility. Maybe in the future Tilt Five could make this change automatic by having the glasses scan a code printed on the board itself (possibly with invisible IR-absorbing ink!). The new v1.3.0 driver does allow for dual controllers and headsets now, so maybe more natural pinch-zoom gestures will be possible in the future? That Beat Saber mod already works with one controller. It would be trivial to support a second one for the full experience. In the meantime, you can just hold down some other button and physically move your wand closer or further away from the board to achieve the same thing. You can even rotate simultaneously while doing this because the controller incorporates an IMU.

Ever since i first saw this product on Tested a while back, I've been wondering if this tech would work well in simulators and cockpits. Rather than finding a way to install and incorporate monitors or conventional projectors, could you just have the "windows" in aircraft, or the "displays" in mechs be that reflective material with tracking markers and essentially have 360 degree wrapped "displays" if desired, without actually having to have "displays" at all. Just that material and it's tracking markers incorporated into the interior of simulators, with the occupants wearing those headsets.

Norm, I was really hoping you'd talk about some of the original castAR-type uses and whether they still work. Such as using the glasses and game board as a TV/monitor to watch things and play normal 2D games. Can you display your computer desktop on it? Etc. For instance, it'd be cool to have a miniature version of the game board that you could take on a plane with you, to use as a screen to watch things without bothering anyone else (or them seeing what you're watching). But I don't actually know if any of this is possible, or not.

22:41 that's actually the BEST USE CASE right now!!! It would be a great Multiplayer experience to have that.

They definitely look cool!

D & D online multiplayer is the perfect use case for this. Can’t wait till that’s available.

Many thanks for this full review ! I have Tilt five in my radar for years waiting to have a review. I have 3 questions : - How do you compare with a Smart Table ? - How is the SDK ? Can you do easy ThreeJS without heavy coding on Unity? - What about phygital: mixing dice and pawn with virtuality ? The problem with Looking glass or TiltFive is the v2, v3 deprecate the v1 and it's not heaven hackable to do something ... Always my feeling is it's cool then what can I do other than a Indy games ?

Interesting product, like to see this evolve. Can be a good alternative to current VR experiences, especially with four people around the board all playing in the same world. I don't see space as a problem since a normal VR headset has the person using that much or more floor space. The price isn't bad considering the cost of some VR headsets.

Konami should pay attention to this. Since it would be amazing for Yu-Gi-Oh since the show has had holograms for years and fans have wanted the monsters to fight

Mirroring doesn't "render" multiple times, it's just an output copy which is generally instant and almost using no resources however depending on some setups, that copy could take a bit more resources if it has to go across different gpus etc..considering this isn't using DP, that likely means it "acts" as its own gpu display output meaning there could be some issues there (something like rendered on internal gpu/dgpu, copied to usb gpu, copied back to internal for mirroring) .. same kinda things you might see with a USB monitor or USB to hdmi kind of thing

never played DnD, but this seems like the perfect tool for virtual DnD games, if thats a thing

I went to the site last year to make the purchase--but the games I want just aren't there. RPGs, even turn based action games (loving Midnight Suns right now) are what I want.

I feel like two player experiences is where this would shine for like animated board games but at about $360 per headset this seems like a lot. Don't see this taking off til they can get like a two pack down to around $400-500.

I was looking at getting an arcade cabinet table for my living room, but as a dedicated VR geek, I think this is a little more apropos for me. My gaming laptop isn't getting much use anyways, so it can sit under the table and run this just fine as my party game furniture. Beats everyone sitting around playing Smash Bros on Switches. In fact, I'm surprised Nintendo isn't trying to acquire them, this is more on brand for them vs. doing VR like Sony.

This could be pretty cool for d&d w/the right software and interfaces for DM

It uses a lot of space, but much less space than standard VR for sure. Maybe if mounted vertically it could be used a like an alternative to a monitor or TV if you dont have the space for a screen and still give you a 3D effect. The price is a little hard for 30 some odd games, but with time I could see the price drop and the tech improve and a lot potential in playing games besides those made for it. I was reminded of the VR game Moss where you are assisting a character remotely, you could probably map a lot of that interactivity to the wand controller. Also the old PS3 game, Eye of Judgment, that used AR cards and PSeye camera. Wouldn't mind being able to repurpose my cards.

Still waiting for turn based and RPG games before i take the plunge. Being able to log into Steam and play my library on this would be perfect!

I do worry about the effect of the system on our eyes over time. People have had their hearing damaged by in ear headphones and I'd hate to see a similar trend happening with eyes as AR/VR really take off. Looks like these are very safe in terms of light level, but time will tell.

This will be perfect in game houses like MOX Boarding House.

That's pretty awesome for social gaming. I could see myself building a gaming table with usb connectivity to a laptop where a DM could control the overall experience. Or have gamers on their phones even controlling their experience. The price is too much but I can see how this tech can lower it's price point with modern mass manufacturing

Super! I would love to play these in Subnautica and Sabnautica: Below Zero. Well, maybe also in Ruft Survival: Multiplayer.

Cool tech. I wish it didn't need the reflective surface though. Maybe just some stickers for position tracking.

Can you play this with the board on the floor, as opposed to a table?

Dnd would be awesome with this

It is neat and all and huge props to Jerri for all her work on them but I can't stand the idea of using the matt with the fold lines being so visible like that. I would have to create my own custom smooth larger board if I owned 1.

I'm interested in seeing the next generation if they make one

Could this run off a Steam Deck?

I love AR and this is amazing! But the main thing that really excites me is when these come down in price and I can pick up 4 to have for parties or game nights. Seems like even non-gamers could pick this up without an issue! So much fun to be had :D Just need some amogus.

Pinball would be amazing on this.

I want to see a pinball table sized Tilt 5 playmat

I like the different content

If they could track your hands and you could input with gestures that would be pretty cool.

Maybe I'm not understanding. What is the benefit to this vs traditional AR where one would use a large tracking pad and a camera enabled headset? Here, the game board is reflecting projected light back to the display, opposed to having a software impose the image on a tracking square. Why is this better?

Wow, cool 😮

it is hard to know what you mean by the image being fuzzy.. I am wodering if that would mean that they would be in adequate for displaying 3d (stereoscopic movies?

If you have a laptop with only 2 USB3 sockets, can you only use 2 sets of glasses of can you use a USB3 hub? Is there enough bandwidth?

will it have vr addon like castar , just a cover over the glasses?

They need to make that black stick slide into the controller or fold down into the back damn they really need a real designer on the team

Unfortunately the images shown are not real but composited. You can tell because the images are above the board, I assume the black border can’t bounce the light back.

The physics are confusing😅. It's not like the material reflects the image off the game board to your eye because of the angle. Pretty cool.

22:10 I would totally be down with a Holochess experience at Disney.

Literally like fighting/playing with one hand behind your back!😬 Controller is weak, but Visually is quite commendable!👍 Mike in San Diego.🌞🎸🚀🖖

Imagine playing DnD on this with a group of friends....

I am so impressed by this.............. but for nearly the same price, I would get an nreal Air, and be able to do cool stuff like watch Tested while washing the dishes, or watch Into the Spiderverse in proper stereoscopic 3D again. I feel kinda sad that Jeri and her team at T5 didn't get this out _years ago._

Oh nice

Table is cool, but what about wallpaper?😎

So you could make a giant one on a floor? :D Or a roll out mat

From Google glass to Microsoft holo lens AR is still in the "gimmick" zone for me. We have a long way to go still before this sees average use.

I was just about to buy a set, and then I choked on the coffee at the checkout. €452.90 in Germany, I guess I'll wait...

At first I thought this was kind of stupid. Like you need board to see anything? And then I saw the price and it made a lot more sense

I've had mine for months and it's a great piece of kit. Needs more software though. The one issue imo is the sound from the glasses, it's pretty bad. It's not a problem really as you can use headphones or your pc speakers, a little surprised it wasn't mentioned though.

Have any tabletop game companies developed for this? Playing some games with lengthy setup on this seems cool

Imagine playing Civ games on these

so originally they showed this working with RPG gamers like DandD so individuals could connect live in three d and get a game group .Seemed ideal to me, but it looks like its really not there yet?

Can this be used for viewing a 3D movie? I know this is a bit more mundane than playing a game, but it might be well suited for this.

interesting tech

Just looking at it, a pinball emulator program and a Pac-Man program would be pretty freaking sweet

I'd kill for Yugioh and D&D on this thing. I'm so excited to see where it goes and, hopefully, this tech gains legitimate traction.

I was always imagining this as a party game type of thing, until you mentioned each pair of glasses needs a PC attached to it. Buying this kit and adding 4 gaming laptops or whatever into the mix is out of reach for what I would've used it for.

The next version may be good for normal consumers.

What is with glasses? is it possible to wear them too?

I was a Kickstarter backer for Tilt Five and unfortunately, given all of the delays and issues out of the box, I can't say I played it for more than a day after I got it and haven't picked it back up since... It didn't work out of the box for me, the USB-C to A adapter it came with didn't work, luckily I had my own adapter that finally worked. Also, I could not find any USB cable extender that worked, so I am forced to basically sit on the floor next to my Desktop PC to play the games....that's probably why I never really went back to it after a day of playing, who wants to play on the floor? I'm sure if I invested some time I can find workarounds for these issues, but 6 months ago when I received my table there were no workarounds I could find. Maybe things have changed a bit since I last looked, I really want to get excited about Tilt Five again

I love the concept, especially in relation to it's potential use for 3D pinball at some point in the future. I do feel that the image appearing outside of the reflective screen area at ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DbjjCn1zJq8.html is a little misleading and guessing this is not actually possible when viewed through the glasses. Is this some form of other capture method that the software supports purely for gameplay recording, based on overlaying the 3D image over the top of what the camera sees (in relation to the play surface)? Somewhat similar to how Quest 2 allows you to record augmented reality videos with an iPhone? Edit: Seems this is discussed at about 20 minutes into the video (they are using Mixcast) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DbjjCn1zJq8.html

Cool yes - but dosn't it defeat the object of AR if its essentially projecting onto a screen? Its more like a clever 3d display than AR at this point. You're still tethered to the 'game board' 'display' thing

Give me something like a ‘Escape from Colditz’ game and I will buy this.