This thing turns your smartphone into an immersive-reality experience

Is this the most economic augmented-reality headset? It very well might be. Basically a ski mask with a slot to slide-in your smartphone, it's called the vrAse. And this relatively affordable gizmo just launched a Kickstarter campaign.The $300 Oculus Rift has been the posterboy of the virtual reality gaming world for the past year, but others are beginning to make some noise. The in-development vrAse is hoping to ride some of that momentum, but with a plan to retail at $75 — a price point that makes sense considering it relies heavily not on its own hardware but your smartphone's — it's a lot friendlier on the wallet.

One big hurdle for the project will be getting developers on board to not only make content available, but desirable as well. Off the bat, it will be consumer-ready to view SBS (side-by-side) versions of video. And other suggested uses include wearing it around, being the so-called “director” of your life. What does that even mean? And do you really want to be that guy? If they make their $86,000 goal by October 14, you'll get a chance to find out.