 Virtual reality headsets are sometimes described as a computer that you wear on your face. Which is not entirely untrue. But what if there was a virtual reality headset that had all the components of an all-in-one PC and you didn't have to be tethered to a separate computer? That's what Intel is pushing with Project Alloy, its new prototype design for merged reality experiences. Now this isn't a headset that Intel is going to sell directly to consumers, but instead it plans to partner with companies like Microsoft to create a headset that it thinks is going to offer a unique experience. I don't know about you, but I could use a little break from actual reality lately, so we went down to Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara to try on Project Alloy and find out a little bit more about what merged reality is supposed to be. This is Project Alloy. It's a prototype headset that Intel has built to show potential hardware partners what it's capable of. It has a bunch of processors and Intel's RealSense cameras built directly into it. And it runs on a battery, so you don't have to be tethered to anything, although it could work that way too. The mobility of Project Alloy along with this concept of merged reality are really what's supposed to set it apart. Merged reality means that you can bring real world objects into a virtual environment and then make them virtual too. And you can also see other people in the room in your virtual world. It's kind of bizarre and cool and disorienting. If Microsoft's HoloLens is all about augmented reality, meaning you can see all of the real world with a layer of computing over it, and Oculus Rift is all about virtual reality, meaning you're entirely in a virtual world, this lies in this crazy place in between. So for example, while we were shooting this video, I found myself in a completely virtual environment, but one where I could still see my verge colleagues and the other people in the lab. I could use physical objects to play a virtual game. If someone handed me a piece of paper and pen, I could still see well enough to write a note with it while I had the VR headset on. I could even check the time on a real physical watch or take a selfie while I was wearing the headset. So a VR headset like this is arguably safer because it means you're not blocking out everything around you and maybe you'll be less likely to walk into something. It also means you don't need complex sensors or fancy hand controllers in order to have a more interactive experience. The model I tried is only version one of Project Alloy. It was pretty clunky and honestly didn't fit all that well. It also felt heavy on my head, even though Intel says that in an ideal world, Project Alloy headsets won't weigh more than around one and a half pounds. And a lot of the real world objects that appeared in my virtual world, whether it was a person standing in front of me or even my own hands, were sort of pixelated and difficult to see. But Intel says a second, updated Project Alloy headset is coming sometime in the new year with better internals and a sleeker design. It will have the newer Intel Core processor, Kaby Lake, an improved computer vision chip from Movidius, and the option for a discrete graphics card. Intel also has a series of dedicated labs set up in its offices where the company is constantly testing things like latency. In other words, how many milliseconds it takes for real world stuff to show up in your computerized world. So far, only Microsoft has publicly committed to working with Intel on this project, but Intel is hoping that Project Alloy is intriguing enough that other companies will want to jump on board as well. So right now, VR is kind of all over the place, right? You have these super simple experiences where you can just throw your phone and a piece of cardboard or even a cloth headset and use it that way. And then you have really advanced VR experiences that usually require tethering to some sort of computer system. Intel is hoping to strike the balance between something that offers mobility and something that's powerful, which so far has been really difficult to achieve. But in alternate reality, I guess anything's possible. Throwing your phone and a piece of card bearer... Card bearer... Card bearer... That card-beared headwear. Super cool, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. belong to the Phantom Authors & Timersставля One.