Avegant Glyph promises retina-beaming virtual reality built into a pair of headphones

One burgeoning area of growth in wearable technology is gaming and immersive entertainment, especially by way of head-mounted displays. We have already seen a lot of success in this space from the likes of Oculus Rift and joining the party is the Avegant Glyph.

You might think the Glyph looks like a pair of noise-cancelling headphones — and that’s because they are. Avegant designed the Glyph to pull double duty as both a visor and a headset. The design is unique to the Glyph and it helps takes the edge off the fact that you look like a Cyborg when using it.

But looking like you are from the future has its benefits. The Glyph promises to deliver sharper, starker, vivid images unlike any you have seen on a screen before. And that’s because Glyph doesn’t have a screen. The device transmits images directly onto your eye using a technology called Virtual Retina Display. The display uses one million micromirrors in each eye to reflect the images onto the back of your retina, making the viewing experience very much like how we see the real world around us.

Beyond the obvious optical benefits, the real bonus of this device is that it is designed to be ready to go as soon as you get it. The Glyph uses an HDMI input to display anything from your TV, computer and even your smartphone. The device also has an integrated head tracker with nine degrees of freedom, perfect for gaming. With no specific programming required to use Glyph, users will be able to watch 3D movies, play games or just listen to music as soon as they put it on.

Avegant launched a Kickstarter campaign yesterday where backers who pledge $499 will receive a fully-functioning beta prototype in December. The beta device is expected to be thinner and lighter than their already-evolved alpha model, especially the earpieces which they want to reduce in thickness by 50%.

So far, Avegant is killing it on Kickstarter: in just hours of going live, their campaign had already surpassed the $250,000 funding goal. And at the time of this article, the campaign had already reached double its funding goal with over $500,000, and they still have 28 days to go.

The overwhelming success on Kickstarter has already got the team working hard to identify and design perks they will attach to new stretch goals at the $500K, $700K and $1 million dollar milestone mark. In an email update to their backers today, they indicated that they are aiming to have more details soon. With Oculus Rift ending their campaign at over $2 million dollars back in 2012, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Avegant join the million-dollar club before the campaign ends next month.