Sensics 3D SmartGoggles Hands On

Sensics is showing off its new Android-based 3D SmartGoggles at CES, and we've tried it out. The 3D head-tracking, eye-tracking, "don't I look like a space marine"  headset is designed to give a total immersion experience in connected devices, playing with an external controller or the sensors built into the device itself. The screens, sensors and other electronics are all housed in the front unit, with a pair of headphones covering your ears and a large brace arcing over your head.

The experience of trying out the headset is a trip, to say the least. A basic 3D environment was on display, and moving the perspective around was easy enough when tilting my head. But moving around required a standard PlayStation style-controller. Camera in the holes on the headset help to sense the change in motion from the surrounding environment. It's all very basic at the moment, probably running on some very low-power hardware running within the unit itself. The 3D was surprisingly good for a demo unit, but the basic game on display didn't really do it justice.

The hardware itself feels very plasticy, and the one-size-doesn't-really-fit-anybody means that women or smaller men will have it move around on their head a lot. The combination of motion tracking, head-mounted display and 3D is interesting, but in this particular package, feels like an arcade experience: fun for a while but you wouldn't want to game with it for hours on end. The Sensics 3D SmartGoggles has no set release date, but they're trying for sometime in 2012.