A lot of digital ink has been spilled heaping scorn on Magic Leap. Much of that media schadenfreude was due to what some believed were unmet promises versus some of the early hype around the product. Others just seemed to be rubbed the wrong way by the startup's Apple-esque secrecy and penchant for attempting to coin new terms and frameworks for things that were, mostly, already in play.
It's no secret that Samsung is working on augmented reality hardware, as the company has been candid about its intentions. However, what we don't know is exactly how many AR projects the company is working on, as patent filings and reports revealed two more over the past week.
The recent Oculus conference in California revealed just a bit more about Facebook's secretive plans to compete in the augmented reality space with its own wearable devices.
This week, while Apple was the subject of thinly sourced reports that it had canceled development of its oft-rumored smartglasses, the Cupertino was actually laying the foundation for its AR hardware future with a new initiative focused on mentoring Chinese developers in mobile AR development.
The future of smartglasses for consumers seems ever dependent on Apple's entry into the market. Coincidentally, the exit of Apple's long-time design chief Jony Ive has shed some light on that eventual entrance.
The ability to shift between virtual reality and augmented reality seamlessly on one device is a dream of many AR fanatics, but the execution is usually fairly buggy or underwhelming.
As the Augmented World Expo (AWE) prepares to open its doors to AR developers and enthusiasts, we sat down with founder Ori Inbar to talk about AR's growth over the past decade, and what the future may hold.
If there is a major blind spot in the AR space in 2019, it's the impact that blockchain technology will eventually have on the software distributed in AR clouds.
To borrow from the canon of Game of Thrones, what is dead may never die. And while the Meta Company that we knew this time last year is no more, the patent infringement lawsuit filed against the company lives on.
The augmented reality industry had enough twists this week to surprise even M. Night Shyamalan.
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.
The saga of augmented reality startup Meta appeared to be at end, but there are new developments unfolding in real time that may either sink Meta deeper into trouble, or provide a tenuous lifeline for the beleaguered augmented reality company.
Signaling a new direction forward for the company, Magic Leap shook up its executive suite by re-assigning to top leaders to new advisory roles. Meanwhile, a new startup backed by Hollywood executives, tech venture firms, and notable angel investors plans to bring new life to AR for marketing entertainment properties.
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.
When you drive along the deceptively sedate streets of Silicon Valley, there are few hints that all those nondescript office parks and low-rise buildings contain the very future of the planet, but they really do. On a recent trip to tech's epicenter, I found that out firsthand when I got to visit the offices of Meta, the startup that produced the Meta 2 augmented reality headset.
This week, we're beginning to see the wide ranging impacts of some of the early iterations of augmented reality hardware and software.
The once blurry and mysterious vision of Magic Leap's future is slowly coming into focus in the present, despite the company's obsessive attempts to keep any and all information under wraps until the next reveal is absolutely necessary. A new tidbit of information hints at an addition to the company's unfolding story that almost no one had accounted for: retail stores.
As the calendar year (and, for many companies, the fiscal year) comes to a close, it appears 2017 may stand as the new high-water mark for investment in augmented and virtual reality technology.
While ARKit and ARCore are poised to bring AR experiences to millions of mobile devices, one company is poised to anchor those experiences anywhere in the world with just a set of geographic coordinates.
JigSpace, a company that uses 3D renderings to give instructions, showed off a fun new way to learn how things work using Apple's ARKit. The video released shows the anatomy of a range of things, including an espresso machine, an Archer Hb Plus chair, and the manual transmission of a car. Not to mention, they also used ARKit to show a 3D how-to of removing an iPhone's SIM card.
There's an epidemic on the Internet, and the disease—Facebook. It's an addiction comparable to a hot cup of coffee in the morning or a soothing cigarette throughout the day—in worse case scenarios, a hit from the crack pipe. If you're on Facebook, you know what I'm talking about. You're addicted to finding out what's going on with your friends and addicted to telling those friends everything you're doing. You can't stop, even when you're at work.
Facebook's annual earnings call on Wednesday didn't come with any big surprises, that is, if you took everything at face value.
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.
Away from the hype around Facebook's smartglasses, the high-end fascination with the Microsoft HoloLens, and the unending rumors about Apple's AR wearable is the small but powerful darling of the enterprise AR world—Vuzix.
During the Tuesday launch of Google I/O, the company's CEO, Sundar Pichai, pulled off a Steve Jobsian "one more thing" move near the end of his keynote address that was simply stunning.
The words of three of tech's most important executives in the last 48 hours are providing some valuable insight into the near term future of augmented reality and the cloud infrastructures that support it.
Next to Apple, Snap is currently one of the most important companies on the planet in terms of delivering products that are moving augmented reality into the mainstream. That's why it's no surprise that Facebook, which is also focused on AR and tried to acquire the company for $3 billion several years ago, duplicates many of the smaller company's features.
On Monday, Apple unveiled its Apple Card, the company's boldest move yet toward becoming a truly mainstream mobile payments company. And the product has vast implications for our augmented reality future, some of which may not be immediately obvious to many.
While Microsoft dominated the augmented reality news at this year's Mobile World Congress, a small AR startup we've covered in the past arrived in Barcelona, Spain, to unveil the next phase of its mission.
I've had a few days to live with the Magic Leap One, and it's time to finally weigh in with some thoughts as someone who has been tracking this company from the beginning, for almost five years now.
While everyone was marveling at the latest drama over at Magic Leap involving employees last week, a major rumor listed in one of the reports, related to the company's flagship device, was mostly overlooked.
Just days before the release of the first image of the Magic Leap device, the company's CEO, Rony Abovitz, knew that the biggest moment of his life was about to unfold the following week. But instead of hunkering down in the Florida-based confines of the company's skunkworks, he instead decided to deliver a speech to the public about, what else, the future.
If you're a regular reader of Next Reality, you're more likely to spread the joy of augmented reality than most others. But it can be difficult to introduce newbies into the AR fold if you don't give them exactly the right starting point in terms ease-of-use and affordability. But fear not, oh gift-giving AR pioneer, we're here to help!
Mobile augmented reality developer Blippar has updated its mobile app for iOS and Android with an augmented reality face profiles feature based on the company's real-time facial recognition engine.
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.
Over the past decade, China tech giant Tencent has invested in several companies with varying roles in the augmented reality industry.
In the great smartglasses race, component makers, such as those that supply the crucial waveguide displays that make visualization of virtual content possible, have a vested interest in pushing the industry forward in order to ship units.
As Apple prepares to potentially introduce its (mostly) secretive AR headset for possible introduction later this year and launch next year, the company has made a strategic investment to ensure its supply chain can support it.
The development of virtual reality at Facebook has been evolving lightspeed in the last few years. But while a relatively small group of VR enthusiasts and gamers are enjoying the social media giant's dedication to immersive headsets, it is the augmented reality space and its potential scale that truly has the tech market enthralled.
Based on recent reports, we've got a pretty clear picture of what to expect from Apple's rumored augmented reality headset expected to arrive next year, but the outlook is more opaque concerning its consumer-grade AR smartglasses.
