No-Glasses 3D Comes to the iPad

kode80 has announced the release of HoloToy 1.03, the third update to its 3D motion tracking hologram technology app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. This update introduces a brand new game and full native iPad support.

The US release of the iPad brought with it a "second gold rush". Many developers have created standalone iPad versions of their apps at sometimes more than double the price of their iPhone counterparts. HoloToy's creator Ben Hopkins has taken a different approach adding a full iPad version to the existing app in it's latest update. He commented "while I am 100% behind developers charging more for iPad apps, I think that price needs to be justified. With HoloToy it was a relatively simple upgrade with most of the additional work coming from creation of iPad specific UI. Apple has made it very simple to create these universal apps (apps that run on all iPhone OS devices) so I'm more than happy to pass on that functionality to existing HoloToy owners".

The hologram-like HoloToy technology is inspired in part by a perspective trick that can be dated back to the 15th century. HoloToy works by distorting the 3D scenes displayed on screen in a way our brains would expect based on the current angle of the device, doing this in real time presents a believable interactive 3D experience that appears to extend right into the device itself. A similar technique was used in Johnny Chung Lee's famous Wii head tracking experiments.


"When I began working on HoloToy I was skeptical as to whether the results would be believable but after I had the initial prototype up and running I knew this was something I wanted to explore more," said Ben. "HoloToy really is a blank canvas on which I can build anything from sculptures to games to interactive stories, it just so happens that the canvas is in 3D. The beauty of digital distribution is that I can create and push these explorations out to users on a weekly basis taking suggestions of what they'd like to see inside the HoloToy next".

Pricing and Availability:
HoloToy 1.03 is only $0.99 (USD) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Entertainment category.