Welcome to the first annual Next Reality 30, our list of people who've made the biggest impact on the augmented reality space in the last 12 months — and what a 12-month roller-coaster ride it's been. Apple introduced ARKit-powered apps last fall, Google launched ARCore for Android soon after, Snapchat began monetizing AR, and the Magic Leap One headset finally came out. These are historic times.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google has packed new functionality into Google Meet to compete with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other video conferencing platforms.
With fears over the COVID-19 pandemic subsiding, live concerts are returning. And Doritos wants to send music fans to a few of them via an augmented reality promotion.
If you're a man and subscribe to podcasts or YouTube channels that cater to masculine interests, then you've almost certainly encountered sponsorships from Manscaped. And that means I don't have to explain what the company is selling you (for the uninitiated, it's a company dedicated to helping you trim your body hair—most notably, your nether regions, in addition to other areas).
In 2018, augmented reality went from the vague promise of interesting things in the near future to tangible developments in software and hardware, proving that immersive computing is indeed the future.
We've shown you the best augmented reality headsets, and now it's time to show you the rest. These are the AR headsets you've probably never heard of or even seen. The AR headsets that, in some cases, have a shot at the big time, and may one day reach widespread adoption, and, in other cases, are unwieldily contraptions that look like something out of a weird science fiction movie.
What was edge automobile technology just a few years ago is now clearly mainstream, as Cadillac just demonstrated via its new 2021 Escalade.
While we've seen Snapchat apply sky segmentation to AR content, the makers of the Blue Sky Paint app have applied similar capabilities to create and share airborne art.
Now that the augmented reality cat is out of the bag, Magic Leap is beginning to open up a bit more about how of some of its work came together in the years and months leading up to the Magic Leap One's release earlier this month. On Wednesday, the company unveiled a behind the scenes video of how the ethereal music-meets-AR app Tónandi was produced in collaboration with Icelandic music group Sigur Rós.
Sending Christmas cards via snail mail is so passé. Why spend the time and money for a bougie photoshoot, saccharine card design, and postage when you can use augmented reality to instantly dress up photos and videos to send to friends and family instead?
The 15-year-old star of the 1980s-inspired hit series Stranger Things, Millie Bobby Brown, may have (spoiler alert) lost all her powers as the character "Eleven," but in the real world, she still has augmented reality in her arsenal.
Because augmented reality is still so new to so many people, there are a number of would-be experts opining online, often repeating basic facts anyone with a spare 15 minutes can find on their own. That's why it's important to point out when someone delivers what could be considered the ultimate cheat sheet for ramping up your AR IQ if you're unfamiliar with the finer points of the space.
Augmented reality could come in very handy for those of us prone to losing things—namely, our wallets. Pixie Technology, a company from Los Altos, California, has developed a way to locate your lost wallet and keys using AR technology and tracking chips, a platform they call the "Location of Things."
Facebook is aware that Snapchat is killing the social media game amongst the youths, which makes sense, because in 2017, video is king in social media currency. Facebook has continually shown that Mark Zuckerberg and crew seem to think the best strategy to keep up is to simply copy them.
The reveal of Apple's new ARKit extensions for iPhones and iPads, while not much of a shock, did bring with it one big surprise. By finding a solution to surface detection without the use of additional external sensors, Apple just took a big step over many — though not all — solutions and platforms currently available for mobile AR.
Even with unlimited resources and a serious case of wanderlust, it's unlikely that you or I will be able to see all of the most famous structures in the world in person.
At its height, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many auto showrooms to close their doors. As the pandemic persists, many consumers are still hesitant to let their socially distanced guard down.
The hype surrounding non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has reached astronomical levels over the past few weeks, and now the technology has intersected with augmented reality's orbit in a fantastic way.
The year 2021 is already promising to yield a number of major shifts in the augmented reality landscape, and Snap is signaling that it has every intention of being an aggressive part of that narrative.
At first glance, it may not sound like there's much value in doing a crossword puzzle in augmented reality, but The New York Times has managed to revamp the pastime as an immersive game.
Amazon has joined the ranks of film and TV studios using the power of augmented reality to engage fans looking to go behind passive screen viewing.
The true crime genre has long been popular on television and more recently on podcasts with shows like Serial.
Indian startup Dimension NXG is launching augmented reality headsets into India's consumer market with a bold idea: focusing on immersive computing in education on the high-end. The plan is to give a new kind of AR headset to schoolchildren in remote Indian villages, starting from class 5 (age 10) until graduation.
After more than a year of teasing and testing, Niantic and Warner Bros. are finally ready to release Harry Potter: Wizards Unite to muggles of the world.
Whenever a new, category-defining Apple product is in the works, we usually get a series of creative concept designs to accompany the rumors swirling around the prospective launch.
After a relatively short beta-testing period, Pokémon Go is now rolling out to Android and iOS devices right now. If you want to catch 'em all in the real world, your wait is over.
In the wake of Google Glass' failure, we can expect other companies to fill the void in due time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Snapchat may be one of the first.
The Chromecast TV streaming lineup from Google is one of the more popular products in the category, primarily due to its low price tag and broad app support.
People fundamentally distrust magicians. And they should. The illusions they proffer are just that, illusions meant to astound rather than tangible interactions and results that have weight and meaning in our real world. Our lizard brains know this, and, no matter what the outstanding feat of "magic" presented, we nevertheless hold fast to our survival-based grip on the truth: we just saw simply "can't be real."
The enterprise-focused category of augmented reality doesn't often get the headlines due to its relatively sedate profile as a mostly factory floor and training-based tool.
While the rest of Big Tech is still moving relatively slowly on augmented reality smartglasses, Snap continues to supercharge its own experimental AR wearable called Spectacles.
The US Department of Treasury isn't generally known for being on the very edge of technology innovations (see the current hubbub around crypto), instead usually waiting until certain tools have been battle-tested in the mainstream or enterprise sector.
Consumers who haven't already delved into the interactive wonders of augmented reality are about to be pushed into the immersive waters by market forces.
The year 2020 sparked a trend of people moving out of big cities, with some opting to buy mobile homes and vans to travel rather than be cooped up in a tiny apartment during quarantine.
While much of the world is currently in some form of quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, augmented reality (AR) gives us all the opportunity to see virtual content while stuck in our homes.
While autonomous vehicles are almost assuredly the future of personal transportation, we are likely many years from seeing self-driving cars become as ubiquitous as manually-driven ones, as the auto industry has a myriad of government regulations and other constraints to contend with. Until then, augmented reality is looking like the next big thing in automotive technology.
Unlike VR, when you're talking about augmented reality, describing what an experience is like can be incredibly difficult — primarily because the experiences are even more contextual than relatively static virtual worlds that don't involve real-world settings.
After a postponement of the Summer Olympics for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tokyo is set to host the games this summer, despite a surge in cases in the city.
The 2021 season of Major League Baseball (MLB) is in full swing, and now that vaccines are widespread in the US, major baseball stadiums are allowing fans back in at full capacity.
What does it mean when a software company obsessively focused on innovating the way we use our mobile devices to see and communicate with the world adds virtual voice agents? Possibly e-commerce magic, with a powerful layer of augmented reality.
