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In the past, tablets used to be a true luxury item - the kind of thing only owned by Moses
and the rest of the prophet crowd. But nowadays, thanks to Apple, everyone and their mum owns
a tablet computer and the market is absolutely saturated with different makes and models.
So the Encore, Toshiba's latest attempt to muscle in on the market, has an uphill battle
ahead of it. Even though all the specs seem really positive:
I'm here with the Toshiba Encore windows 8.1, 8'' tablet. It's got a 1280x800 resolution
screen, a really bright screen with wide viewing angles, so great for sharing content with
friends and family. It's got an Intel Atom processor, a quad core processor, so it's
a really powerful device easily able to run multiple applications. Great for web browsing,
your social media feeds with Facebook or Twitter or various other applications such as Skype.
With the shelves already crammed full of tablets, Toshiba need to come up with a smart way to
show off off their new machine. So they've teamed up with Inition, a production company
that specialises in using emerging technologies to create unique interactive experiences and
installations. And at an event in London they showed us how they've combined augmented reality,
3D scanning and virtual reality with the Toshiba Encore to really show off the power of the
machine. First up was an augmented reality programme that allowed a virtual BMW car to
move around a real environment while being controlled by a keyboard. Inition have used
this tech on a much larger scale to do outdoor installations, but this was the first time
that they used a tablet to run the programme - and they even used the 8-megapixel camera
to capture the images. But that was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Inition
had planned for the event.
Today we've been using a whitelight scanner. It's a device that runs solely on Windows
based platforms, and it's a whitelight scanner. We've been using it to create likenesses of
people here and produce some album artwork for them. We're using the Encore tablet to
manipulate and view that content whilst one of our 3D artists works on software in the
background to produce the artwork. The Encore has been really good for us here as professional
users we're locked in to Windows based applications, and we've never had something that can extend
those onto a tablet before.
And it wasn't the only first at the event - the last thing we saw was the brilliant
Oculus Rift virtual reality headset being used in conjunction with Encore to make a
fool out of the people using it.
Well it was that and also this.
We're showing how the Encore has enough graphics processing grunt to handle the demands of
virtual reality and what it is going to be doing is rendering two different views, one
for your left eye and one for your right eye, but also responding quick enough that when
you turn your head the world keeps up with you, which is a very important aspect of good
virtual reality experience.
We got to try two different Oculus demos out - the first, the Tuscan villa was a leisurely
stroll through some sun kissed architecture that felt truly immersive. While the second
was a skydive simulator created for Nissan that was exhilarating - even if it did mess
up your hair. But the coolest thing about it all is that by using the Encore there is
the potential to make virtual reality a portable experience.
The ability to untether yourself from the big box in the corner of your room. So it's
certainly suited to virtual reality which the display device is very very small, it
seems a shame to be tethered to one position. So it's definitely a future of virtual reality.
Our time at Inition showed us that despite their small stature, tablets like the Toshiba
Encore are capable of some really surprising things - making them much more than places
to play Flappy Bird.