Meta CEO and founder — and Next Reality 50 member —Meron Gribetz unveiled a new operating environment for augmented reality called Meta Workspace for the audience at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California, today.
Today in Santa Clara, California, at the Augmented World Expo, Scope AR revealed a major new update that will add markerless tracking for their remote assistance application, Remote AR, on standard devices.
Another entrant — Aryzon — has joined the competition to be crowned as the "Cardboard of AR." The Netherlands-based startup launched their Kickstarter campaign Monday (May 29) and the campaign has already surpassed its funding goal. The company expects to ship units to backers in September.
The common thread between this week's Brief Reality stories is that augmented reality is beginning to prove its worth as a technology that improves workflows and processes. From customer service to healthcare to manufacturing, augmented reality is helping companies improve productivity.
Google announced several new devices (as well as updates to existing devices) that will take advantage of the company's augmented and virtual reality platforms.
It seems like everyone wants to be flying without wings these days, and some big players in the autonomous car industry want a piece of that airborne action. Google co-founder Larry Page just invested in flying car startup Kitty Hawk, while Uber is adamant that its own-brand of flying vehicles will be zooming around the US come 2020.
Those of us that work with or around augmented and mixed reality have seen a powerful shift in the last year as the popularity and interest have grown in the field. With Microsoft's HoloLens release, the popularity of Pokémon GO, and the constant rumor mill known as Magic Leap, the terms augmented reality and mixed reality have started to become a part of the modern vernacular more and more each passing day.
While the numbers may not always seem to agree, the message remains the same: augmented reality is a growth segment. This week's edition of Market Reality starts with two new reports outlining the expected good fortunes for the industry and concludes with an example of a company capitalizing on their own growth.
Apple staff will be put through their paces now that the company's "Automated System" for driverless cars is in motion.
Snap Inc. is no stranger to augmented reality. In fact, AR has been the Snapchat app's most popular feature, as face filters continue to update and change the way we communicate with each other. But in a new move, Snap Inc. is showing its commitment to improving AR and its real-world integration with its updated world lenses.
Just like in the Spy Kids 3D movie, US soldiers may soon upgrade their mission planning from 2D to 3D. Welcome to the wonderful world of augmented reality, US Army.
Apple is in the process of developing its own graphics processors for future iPhones, according to recent reports.
Unity 5.6 was just released on March 31, and it will be the last entry in the Unity 5 cycle. With all of the new features, it looks like Unity 5 is going out with a bang.
Soon, users will no longer need an expensive headset or even a smartphone to experience mixed reality. The new Microsoft update will be bringing mixed reality applications to every Windows computer next month. This new upgrade to Windows 10 named the Windows 10 Creators Update.
Based in the DC Universe, Injustice: Gods Among Us was a runaway success on the iOS App Store, generating enough downloads to rival its console-based iteration in terms of popularity. But now, the sequel to this long-running game, Injustice 2, is finally out in the wild, as it was soft-launched in the Philippines this past February.
Apple is combining internal and external talent in an effort to give them in edge in the augmented reality market, though we still don't know what form their foray into alternative realities will actually take.
In a race to make self-driven cars mainstream, Intel announced today that they've bought Israeli microchip technology company Mobileye for $15.3 billion, setting the stage for Intel to dominate a large portion of the driverless market.
Xiaomi phones run a skinned version of Android known as MIUI, which, over the years, has been a popular custom ROM. One of the standout features Xiaomi has added to the mix is something called Quick Ball, which lets you navigate your phone by swiping inward from a small circle that resides on the edge of your screen.
While there are many uses for augmented reality in the automotive industry, adoption has been slow. With the plethora of makes and models on the road today and rolling off assembly lines tomorrow, developing and deploying knowledge bases that utilize augmented reality to dealerships and garages can be costly and difficult to scale.
Over a billion people use WhatsApp, which makes it the most popular standalone messaging service out there. But if you're one of the many people whose group of friends relies on WhatsApp for all communication, chances are, you have several years-long messaging threads with all sorts of random pictures and GIFs cluttering up the place.
Late last year, two surgeons from the Instituto de Ortopedia e Traumatologia de Jaraguá do Sul in Brazil started using a combination of 3D printing and the Microsoft HoloLens to help plan spinal surgeries. And now, with the rest of their team, they've successfully performed a surgical procedure on their first international patient using their 3D impression planning and augmented reality process.
If your phone has an AMOLED display, it doesn't waste any battery to power black portions of the screen. This is because the individual pixels that make up an AMOLED screen emit their own light, which means the backlight you'd find behind a traditional LCD screen is not present. In other words, showing a full-screen black image on an AMOLED phone is like turning your display completely off.
A few days before Christmas last year, we saw the first glimpse of HoloSuit, a new motion controller by startup Kaaya Tech. This full-body motion controller is designed as a tracksuit with sensors that can be used to control devices such as a computer or Microsoft HoloLens, and now it's getting ready to start production, with an upcoming Kickstarter campaign planned to go live soon.
Meta's long-awaited Meta 2 development kit finally began shipping in late-December last year, after having been delayed about six months. While very few have received a dev kit at this point, some more information about the headset has just been announced; Depth-sensing technology from pmdtechnologies is included in the dev kit headset.
Every day the young world of mixed reality is creating new ways for people to work with with computers. We are looking for, and finding, new ways for these head-worn computers to understand what we tell them. Sometimes it is with our hands, sometimes it is where we turn our head, sometimes it is what we say. In the case highlighted below, it's where we walk.
A few days ago, I pulled up the Windows Store on my HoloLens and saw a few new applications. One that caught my attention was Oriental Museum, which lets you explore China's Forbidden City, and the other one is very similar free demo app called Secrets of Ancient Egypt by Link Development.
This week, Dr. Sung-Hoon Hong, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, announced at the Virtual Reality Summit in San Diego that not only does Samsung have a new virtual reality headset coming, but that Samsung intends to enter the field of augmented reality, too. In fact, Hong talked very little about virtual reality and instead spoke at length about Samsung's move into augmented reality.
We've been hearing some interesting rumors in the last few days that are stirring up all kinds of speculation about the potential upcoming consumer release of the HoloLens. However, MSPoweruser has speculated a bit further past the consumer HoloLens release to a possible HoloLens 2 as soon as Q3 2017.
For those of us that were blown away by the spatial mapping and user experience in Fragments and Young Conker, the version of spatial mapping that came stock in the HoloToolkit was lackluster at best. It became apparent really quick that to get an amazing presentation would require some heavy shader knowledge and some badass mesh culling skills, at the very least.
Windows Insiders running Build 14971 of Windows 10 in the Fast Ring can now look for the "Windows Holographic First Run" app to check to see if their PCs are up to the task of running Windows Holographic. It won't detect your VR headset yet, but at least you'll be able to see if your computer will be compatible.
Visualization is one of the obvious commercial applications for technology such as Microsoft's HoloLens. The ability to see the assets of a project in different scales—from micro to larger-than-life—with a quick air tap will play a large part in the coming augmented reality revolution. Whether the assets are art for a game, interior design, raw financial data, or architecture, data visualization will play an important role in the future. This is due, in part, to our ability to absorb informat...
Google and Microsoft have both established platforms and hardware for emerging digital realities, but Apple, true to form, hasn't had much to say on the subject. They've shown interest in augmented reality, and we've seen patent filings that indicate research and development, but a recent rumor points to that research ending up in your car instead of a rose gold headset.
A company known as Cyanogen, Inc. has been in the news numerous times over the past year, and almost every time their name is brought up, it's amid reports of an impending doom. The writing is on the wall for the makers of Cyanogen OS, as it appears that there is little that can be done to prevent the company from going belly-up in the near future.
It's no surprise that the Microsoft Kinect can provide far better motion tracking than the HoloLens currently can on its own, but at least one developer didn't want to wait for the company's own eventual implementation. Kyle G, founder and CEO of Wavelength Studios, projected his movements using a Kinect into a holographic zombie.
While Leap Motion and Microsoft are looking to capture natural human motion with cameras, Enflux figured out how to do it with a shirt and pants that feel completely natural.
The HTC Vive and Valve's SteamVR make for one of the more compelling virtual reality experiences, mixing in real-world motion tracking with the immersive headset. But third-party manufacturers couldn't tap into the Vive's full potential and make creative new peripherals—until now.
When you're on the road, the last thing you need to be doing is fumbling around with your phone. But with online radio services like Spotify and Google Play Music, you almost have to use your phone to play music through your stereo, because the in-dash head units on most cars lack the ability to connect to these services.
Microsoft has the HoloLens and Google has their money on Magic Leap (as well as their own Tango and Cardboard, among others), but we've heard next to nothing about how Apple plans to enter the virtual/augmented/mixed reality space. A new patent offers some clues.
Microsoft's HoloLens has many applications in the business world, both large and small, but what about gaming? Initial demos gave the impression that we could expect amazing first person shooters, platformers, and even Minecraft. Yet, as Newsweek noticed, the HoloLens was nowhere to be found at E3 this year.
Most augmented/mixed reality hardware still exists in the development stage, whether that's one of the more robust headsets or a high-powered smartphone. Most everything else isn't widely used or monetized. Snapchat, however, snuck in under the radar and created the foundation for the first social network to focus on augmented reality.
