Rick Johnson and Jeri Ellsworth of Technical Illusions, creator of CastAR
WOODINVILLE, Wash. — Inside a big home in the forested suburbs of Seattle, augmented reality glasses aren’t just an illusion. They’re about to become real products, dubbed CastAR, that can deliver games and other visual apps with cool 3D effects.
Inside the house jammed with pinball machines and prototypes, a team of former Valve employees — led by chip engineering wizard Jeri Ellsworth and game progammer Rick Johnson — have created the startup Technical Illusions. They’re designing inexpensive augmented reality glasses that they believe will create a new level of excitement for the category.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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