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Elite Beyond Recognition: Extreme $timulation
Upgrade the little man’s boat.
Elite Beyond Recognition: 150 Inch Television
The world’s biggest television.
Elite Beyond Recognition: Ovei Personal Multimedia Pod
You don’t need it, and damn sure can’t afford it. While you gaze upon the showcase here, you can hear your checkbook crying wherever it is — that’s for sure. We don’t care. We’re just waving flashy stuff around that we can’t afford either. Welcome to your tour of the unnecessary and elite.
So let’s play with a hypothetical: You’re an important person. You’re a trendsetter, a decision-maker, one of the quintessential “who’s” in any list of Who’s Who. You spend your days brokering power and deciding the fate of any number of fortunes, including your own. And when you come home from a long hard day of both moving and shaking, all you wanna do is stretch out on your couch and pick up that controller. But, oh… turns out Little Billy stole the spare Mercedes and crashed it into the gym of his private school and Long Lost Cousin Sam shows up out of nowhere because he wants to pitch you this totally bitchin’ idea he came up with and all he needs from you is a teency little bit of startup money and you’ll make it all back plus interest in just 2 and a half years provided this guy he knows will let him use his shop to build the prototype and goddammit all you wanted to do was come home and spend an hour or so relaxing and playing some Black Ops!
With great wealth comes great pains in the ass.
Yeah. We get it. With great wealth comes great pains in the ass. What you need, my very wealthy friend, is a temporary escape. Seclusion, privacy, peace and quiet — your own little brief respite from the rest of the world.
“The hell is an Ovei?” That, right there. The Ovei Personal Multimedia Pod. Pretty damned fancy, ain’t it? Starting its life in 2002 as the “Oculas,” designer Lee McCormack has taken his concept prototype and, along with a collaboration with McLaren Applied Technologies (yeah – THAT McLaren), has finessed and evolved and sexed his little idea into a shiny little ball of future with a fancy name. Here’s a few of the tech specs, lifted from the official Ovei Site:
Acoustics
The Ovei format creates a perfect 5.1 surround sound environment; the interior has an acoustic surface design treatment supported by optimal material density.
Visuals
The main viewing screen is positioned at an optimal 60cm from the user. Where necessary, additional side and control interface screens provide surround viewing.
Seating
The seating position is designed to support the length of the body, reducing stress on the back for maximum comfort. The reclined position is surrounded by armrests, touch screen capabilities, work surface and screen positioning to facilitate the optimal work, play or rest conditions.
And those are just the base elements. The only other standard is that the whole thing (including the automatic door) is controlled with a little touch-screen tablet and then everything else is up to you. The finer details are extremely customizable and can be built to accommodate pretty much any personal or professional need – from gaming to research to marketing to various simulation programs. Of course, the Ovei has gotten the most attention as a personal gaming pod, but the fact is it has the potential to be an extremely versatile little… well… rather big device. It’s certainly small and sleek enough to enhance the décor in any modern home, but it’s not out of place anywhere, honestly. They even design them to be element-proof so you can place one outside. Conventions, Expos, Arcades, Hospitals, Laboratories, your game room – this shiny little isolation chamber could make itself at home at any and all of those places. That’s rather impressive on its own.
It’s certainly not new to the gadget world: the Ovei has been getting press and hands-on exhibition since 2008, but as of yet, has not gone into any sort of serious commercial production. Looking at the Ovei site, there’s no “Buy it now” button or link, but there are various partnership opportunities for research and brand promotion, should you wanna give it a spin. However, that’s not to say that there are no plans for a residential push — in the video below you’ll see one of Ovei’s representatives talking about how a “famous American rap star” has already ordered on for his own home, so if you really wanted one, and had the resources to get it (early reports have the Ovei costing about $100,000) — it’s not unfathomable to think that you could get your hands on one. Though, out of curiosity, I shot the sales team an e-mail about 3 weeks ago with a few perfunctory questions (power usage, device compatibility, etc) and have yet to get a reply, so who knows for sure?
Even though it’s not accessible to the average Joe, this little ball carries a massive price tag and can certainly be used as a way to sate your taste for the exclusive. And there are indeed a laundry list of practical applications that can be carried out that will turn the initial investment into just that.
A little advice for the Ovei team:when you guys do start your push to snag the residential purchases, make sure this thing has some sort of web-browsing capability. All you have to do is push that one little facet and potential customers will start to put two and two together…
…that for a measly hundred-grand, they too can have their own personal, private porn box. I think it’ll prove priceless.
This is excellent! It’s one of the first MUST HAVE items I’ve seen featured in the EBR article series. I wish I had one of these things right now, I’d crawl in and take a nap. I hate outside distractions, lights and noises. This is perfect for focusing the power of your mind on your preferred media of choice. Normally I just lay in bed propped up on pillows with the curtains closed, but it requires a constant effort not to allow myself to notice the world outside my TV screen (objects in my room, sounds from fans, ETC)
IMHO, in the future the vast majority of our lives will be spent in pods like these. Most of our entertainment will be linked directly into our brains, but pods with their various connectivity options will remain a key means of interacting with the world. As the mind becomes the mainframe for our consciousness, the means by which we access larger information networks, our physical bodies will become less and less important. These pods could one day serve as transport too, taking you home or to whatever other locations our actual physical presence is required. A sleep like stasis state could be induced in these pods, keeping our physical bodies alive while our brains would be free to work without limit, unconstrained by time or space. Nutrition, ETC could all one day be delivered via pod
The Oculus (“Ovie”) is just the first step but it’s very very cool!
PS The name is terrible though. I don’t see how they could abandon the awesome OCULUS name (which means “eye”) in favor of Ovei
I heart you so hard. And you could very well be right – that’s been the case in countless works of fiction.
Thanks, JGB! Before this article I had no idea that we were already in the age of the pod, but it’s a new frontier for sure. A media pod may be a luxury item in 2011, but the idea of dealing with data in a sealed off enviroment isn’t likely to disappear any time soon IMHO
I will admit, that is one awesome looking pod. I’d love to have one for Blu-ray watching! FULLY SUBMERGE yourself.
Jeremy, I appreciate your comments and interest in the Ovei Pod – it’s been a long time in development and is currently entering final stages before going into production. I wanted to give you guys a heads-up on the sensitive issue of the price, good news! It’s not going to be anywhere near the $100k, more like $15k. It’s still a sizeable amount but if everyone understood what it took to design, engineer and produce a new product then I think that would be viewed as the right price. BTW – the experience will blow your mind, pure surround sound unlike ANYTHING you’ve experienced to date.
@lee-mccormack
Are you the designer of the pod? If so, congrats, it’s cool. IMHO 15 grand is a better price, though still out of my price range. BTW, why did you get rid of the OCULUS name? It’s 100% better, IMHO. Was it because OCULUS means “EYE” and then you’d be making an “eye pod”, risking possible lawsuit?
BTW check out my pod idea listed below. I think that if you designed your pods to look like the telepods from THE FLY they’d be even better, though they already do look neat. Here is a telepod image for you :http://cinemonkey.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/telepods.jpg
The pod on the far right is TELEPOD 3, the one without windows
Kate, yes the Ovei Pod (previously Oculas) is my design. I changed it from Oculas because I really like the name – I use it now elsewhere (oculas.com). It does mean the central part of the eye as you spell it but also it’s an architectural feature…the hole found in domed roofs like the Parthenon in Rome. The locals describe it as “the window to the gods”. It affects the light and acoustics inside the room….that’s why I called the pod Oculas…just changed the spelling to get the .com. I checked out the telepods….nice but a little too fussy for my liking
…still they’re probably cheaper than my one.. he he.
BTW, what does IMHO mean?
@LEE-mccormack
The oculas is actually in the Pantheon (and the Parthenon is in Greece), but you’re right, it’s cool. The Romans never cease to amaze me, and I’m sure Marcus Agrippa would be proud to have inspired your pod!
You should watch THE FLY (1986) sometime, then perhaps you’d find the idea of a media pod shaped like one of Brundle’s telepods as amusing as I do : P
PS IMHO means “in my humble opinion”
ALTERED STATES!!!
I do want one of those.
POD IDEA: make it look like the windowless TELEPOD 3 from THE FLY(1986)