Among the 212 companies to show off new and exciting products at the Augmented World Expo this year was Massless, which debuted its new virtual reality pen. The Massless pen can both write in virtual reality spaces and be pointed precisely at VR objects, meaning it can be incredibly useful for a number of applications including civil and mechanical engineering and animation. Ori Inbar, the founder and managing partner at Super Ventures, one of the investors in Massless, said in a statement, “the Massless team has done an outstanding job of taking their prototype product and turning it into the product they are launching today. The Massless Pen has become one the most anticipated new product launches in our portfolio.”
The innovative new product will have a number of real world scenarios where it could prove very useful. In scenarios which use complex 3D modeling such as engineering, the CEO of Massless Jack Cohen, believes the highly accurate and intuitive pen, which has precision up to 0.05 millimeters accuracy, could be a game-changer. The device allows users to view and manipulate the models they are working with in a 3D space, and rotate the models to view them from various angles, which has proved cumbersome in the past. This increases understanding of the objects users are working with, giving whole new perspectives on the potential problems or strong points of a design. It is also possible to write with the pen in the VR space when needed, with users being able to use it like a drafting pen. The Massless pen also makes it possible for one team to create a design while another views it in real-time, which the CEO points out could increase both productivity and profits.
The company, who has offices in London and San Francisco is expected to make the pen commercially available sometime in 2017. For the device to work, it requires a VR-ready computer, at least 16GB of main memory, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card (or a better model,) and an Intel Core i5 or better. Massless has not yet released an estimated price for the device, which they say will be marketed mainly to professionals working in the areas of design and engineering.