News: Independent Developers Can Now Get Feedback on Their Work by Sharing Their Creations in Magic Leap World
Magic Leap is making it easier for developers to share their spatial computing experiments with other Magic Leap One users.
Cluttered Market Search Results
Market Reality: Snap CEO Tops NR30, Apple Sneaks Spatial Awareness into New iPhone, Daqri Runs Out of Runway
This time last year, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and his company were faced with an erosion of its user base that cratered its stock price. This year, on the strength of Snapchat's AR camera effects, the company has reversed course. And that's why Spiegel tops the NR30, our annual list of the leaders in the AR industry.
Market Reality: Magic Leap Gets New AT&T Streaming App, 6D.Ai Partners with Qualcomm, & Ximmerse Previews Rhino X
While Magic Leap doesn't yet have a consumer edition of the Magic Leap One, that hasn't stopped AT&T from building apps for mainstream audiences for the headset.
News: Startup Light Field Lab Lands $28 Million in Funding from Samsung, Verizon, & Comcast for Holographic Displays
The venture arms of Samsung and Verizon Ventures, along with Comcast, are among the strategic investors backing startup Light Field Lab and its glasses-free holographic displays in a $28 million Series A funding round
Market Reality: Magic Leap App Makes Waves, Norm Glasses Push Smartglass Future, & Facebook's Mind-Powered Controllers
When it comes to the business of augmented reality, companies that aren't already introducing new products or apps are focused on producing the AR technology of the future. But in the realm of real products and apps, Magic Leap continues to show off what its headset can do, this time via a new app that transports users to the ocean's depths.
News: Nreal Pushes On in Face of Magic Leap Lawsuit with SDK Launch for Nreal Light Smartglasses
In the midst of fending off legal challenges from Magic Leap and Epic Games, startup Nreal isn't retreating. Instead, the company is digging in its heels and pushing forward with its launch plan for its Nreal Light smartglasses.
News: Nike Begins Using Augmented Reality for Sneaker Fitting in Mobile App & in Retail Stores
After applying augmented reality as a solution for the sale and marketing of sneakers, Nike is taking the next step in its adoption of AR to improve the customer experience.
News: Facebook Updates Spark AR with Windows Support & New Features, Instagram AR Arriving This Summer
Two years ago, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the F8 Developers Conference keynote with augmented reality and the introduction of Facebook's AR camera platform, now known as Spark AR.
Market Reality: A Hidden ODG & Magic Leap Connection, Epic Games Launches Fund, & Investors Back Mojo Vision & Scope AR
While Magic Leap turned heads at the Game Developers Conference with AR experiences at the Unity and Unreal Engine booths, news broke that the company was the winning bidder for ODG's patents.
Market Reality: HoloLens 2 Secrets Revealed, Nreal CEO on AR Future, Meta Lawsuit Update, & Verizon Teams with Vuzix
As Microsoft continues to bask in the glow of its HoloLens 2 unveiling and begins ramping up the hype to launch, Nreal and Vuzix are carving out their own niches in the AR hardware landscape.
Market Reality: Samsung & Microsoft Dip into the Mobile AR Galaxy, with (Respectively) New Hardware & AR Apps
The augmented reality industry had enough twists this week to surprise even M. Night Shyamalan.
Market Reality: AR Goes to Court as Meta Infringement Case Unfolds & Epic Games Takes on Nreal for Trademark
Reading the augmented reality news lately has felt a bit like reading a John Grisham novel, as the business side of things has dripped with legal drama.
News: Bluetooth 5.1 Adds Precision Location, Offers Beacons for Indoor Navigation & More Augmented Reality Experiences
The ability for apps and devices to determine the precise location of physical and virtual objects in space is a key component of augmented reality experiences, and the latest advancements in Bluetooth technology may have a hand in facilitating such location services in the near future.
Market Reality: Meta Comes Clean on Crash, Microsoft Prepares HoloLens 2, & Niantic Captures Another Funding Round
Despite its status as a hot commodity amongst emerging technologies, the augmented reality industry is not immune to the ebbs and flows that occur in every industry.
News: Walmart & Target Unwrap New Augmented Reality Features to Bring in Holiday Shoppers
This year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be fertile ground for augmented reality to show its worth, as both Walmart and Target have crafted immersive experiences designed to engage shoppers in the coming weeks.
Market Reality: Lyft Acquires Blue Vision, Google & Samsung Invest in AR, & Epic Games Scores Massive Funding Round
With would-be unicorns Magic Leap and Niantic among its investments, Google is an active investor in augmented reality technology. This week, the search giant experienced both ends of the investment cycle, with an exit via Lyft's acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, and a funding round for Resolution Games.
Market Reality: Disney's Bob Iger Leads NR30 AR Investors, Magic Leap Acquires Computes, & Snap to Invest in AR Hardware
This week, we continued our NR30 series highlighting the leaders of augmented reality space by profiling the venture capitalists and strategic corporate investors that sustain the industry.
News: New Line of Augmented Reality-Powered Wines Celebrate Women's Empowerment via Historical Figures
Just in time for Women's Equality Day on Aug. 26, Treasury Wine Estates is breaking out a line of wines with augmented reality experiences that pay tribute to historically famous women.
News: Magic Leap Sheds Light on Lumin OS, Disney Creates AR's Future, & The New York Times Innovates on AR Strategy
Magic Leap has earned a reputation for overt secrecy, but as it nears the highly-anticipated launch of the Magic Leap One, the company is spilling some of the beans. This week, we get a heaping helping of information on the Lumin OS, as well as a couple of great demos.
News: Facebook Brings Augmented Reality Ads to Its News Feed
Facebook is preparing to make augmented reality experiences for brands more visible in its mobile app with Tuesday's introduction of augmented reality ads in its News Feed.
News: ARCore Closes Gap with ARKit via Image Recognition from Viro Media
Upon Google's release of ARCore in February, the platform wasn't only playing catch-up with Apple and ARKit in terms of downloads, but it also lagged in capabilities, as Apple already had vertical surface recognition and image recognition on the way with ARKit 1.5 for a March release.
News: Galaxy S9 & S9+ Will Support T-Mobile's New 600 MHz LTE Band — Rural Users Rejoice
In 2017, after purchasing a majority of the 600 MHz frequency, T-Mobile began a massive rollout of the new LTE Bands across the US. However, there are currently only two devices that support the frequency, also known as LTE Band 71. Thanks to a recent FCC listing, we've learned this number will double when the Galaxy S9 and S9+ debut next month.
Apple AR: Blippar Charts New Territory with Launch of First AR Navigation App for iPhones & iPads
Mobile AR developer Blippar has achieved a breakthrough by releasing what appears to be the first commercially-available AR navigation app.
Brief Reality: Mobile AR Apps Help Save Rhinos (& Sell Stuff)
Mobile apps themselves are not always the end product or service for generating revenue. More often, they are deployed as tactics within a larger marketing or public relations strategy.
News: Social Fresh CEO Jason Keath Explains Why AR Will Become a Massive Business Platform
Innovation Congress starts tomorrow, but its creator, Jason Keath, spoke to Next Reality today about the future of augmented reality.
News: Hilton Customers Successfully Unlocked Their Rooms Over 11 Million Times via App
A few years ago, the Hilton hotel group unrolled the Digital Key, a feature of the Hilton Honors app that allows you to unlock your hotel room with your smartphone.
News: Nissan to Offer Driverless in Europe with SUV Launches
Nissan began to offer Level 2 driving capacities in a mainstream model when it debuted its ProPilot self-drive option for its Serena minivan in Japan last year.
Brief Reality: Blippar Delivers ARcade for M&M's Promotion
Marketing and healthcare, two of the leading industries in the adoption of augmented reality, continue to demonstrate applications for the technology in their businesses. Meanwhile, improvements to augmented reality devices are just around the corner with new developments from two display makers.
Brief Reality: Industries Take a Peek at the Future of Augmented Reality
This week's Brief Reality is led by a pair of stories with an eye to the future of the augmented reality industry, first in terms of standards for the industry, then with regards to its future applications in the automotive realm. Finally, one company looks to boost its future sales with an executive hire.
News: Velodyne Joins the Cheap Solid-State LiDAR Game with the Velarray Sensor
Velodyne wants to set the standard for the driverless industry when it comes to LiDAR. To do that, the Silicon Valley-based team just announced its next step — create a low-cost, fixed-laser sensor that can be embedded into a wide range of automotive and autonomous vehicles. That next step is named the Velarray. A sturdy, compact, and affordable LiDAR laser.
News: Baidu Announces Apollo Platform to Speed Up Development of Driverless Cars
Chinese search engine giant, Baidu, has just announced its own autonomous car platform which is intended to speed up the development of driverless vehicles.
Brief Reality: AR Hits the Conference Circuit
Every Tuesday, Next Reality will give readers a rundown of the augmented and mixed reality news briefs from the preceding week that we didn't cover already. This way, you'll never miss anything of importance in the Next Reality landscape, and will always know what's going on with new augmented and mixed reality tech and applications.
News: Sony's Smurfs Movie to Provide Mixed Reality Experience for Kids on the HoloLens
Sony has upped the ante for the promotion of Smurfs: The Lost Village, which was released on April 7 in the US, with a mixed reality experience via Microsoft's HoloLens.
News: Elon Musk Says Tesla's Model 3 'Release Candidate' Prototypes Will Be Ready to Drive in 2 Weeks
According to Electrek, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in a covert conference call with a select few investors, commented in detail about his plan to have Tesla's Model 3 driving on the road earlier than we all expected.
News: NIO Shows Off World's Fastest Self-Driving Car at SXSW
This year's SXSW festival had a plethora of news and discussion about autonomous cars, but perhaps none was more exciting than the NIO EP9. The car was first shown off in November in London when it ran the Nürburgring Nordschleife track in record time.
News: Ex-Magic Leapers Confirm the Demo Video We All Thought Was Faked... Was Faked
When the "Just another day in the office at Magic Leap" video was released last year, it was called a mind-blowing, stunning, and breathtaking take on mixed reality gaming. It was a great presentation of what the technology could be, but not for a second did I think it was anything other than a concept video, and I'm not the only one who thought that. This was a goal to reach for mixed reality, not the reality.
News: Google's Pixel Sales Have Already Surpassed HTC, LG & Motorola
Google has a new smartphone, and if you own a TV or a computer, you've almost certainly heard about it. The ad campaign for the Pixel and Pixel XL is approaching iPhone levels of omnipresence, as Google has reportedly spent over $3.2 million on marketing, with that number expected to skyrocket in the coming months.
News: Make Use of Your Bigger Screen with These 12 Tablet-Ready Apps
Ever since the Google Play Store removed its "Designed for tablets" section, it's been a lot harder to find good, tablet-optimized Android apps. Not that it was all that great to begin with considering that they used to list apps like Facebook and Twitter, which only have oversized phone UIs on tablets, not actual customized UIs.
Weird Ingredient Wednesday: Zucchini Blossoms
Those ordinary green zucchini you see in the market are hiding a lovely, delicious secret: Actually, all summer squashes produce these delightful blooms, but the zucchini's are most frequently used for eating since they taste the best: fresh, clean, and zucchini-like, but with a little something extra. They used to be a rarity at supermarkets, so you had to have a garden or a gardener friend who would generously share the bounty with you.
CES 2015: Pronto Turns Your iPhone into an All-in-One TV Remote
While Android devices made by HTC, Samsung, and others have long utilized IR (infrared) blasters to offer remote control functionality, Apple has still yet to embrace it on iPhones.