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.
In the nascent AR/VR race, any release news is big news. For augmented reality, those invested in the new technology eagerly await the release of Microsoft's Hololens and any inkling of information that comes with it. If you're one of those folks, you're in luck, as new information has just been disclosed about one of Microsoft's partners on the project, Lenovo, and their Hololens; including its release date and price.
Facebook really wants us to use Messenger. For the most part, they've succeeded; theirs is one of the most popular messaging apps right now. And with yesterday's announcement of new features, Facebook is only going to make their flagship chat application better.
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.
The Broadway musical War Paint is teaming with augmented reality cosmetics app YouCam Makeup to promote the show on iOS and Android devices. The musical, which centers on the famous rivalry between Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, two cosmetics industry pioneers, has been the talk of Broadway since its premiere in March 2017.
NBA star Andre Iguodala, of the Golden State Warriors, got to try out a Magic Leap demo in Florida and started dishing out some pretty revealing details about the upcoming mixed reality headset to CNET's Brian Tong.
Although John Chen of BlackBerry still sees Qualcomm as a partner, the chip maker and telecommunications company has just been given a preliminary order to pay BlackBerry $814,868,350 in royalty overpayments.
It seems nowadays there's no limit to what type of companies are looking to invest in augmented reality. Given both the positive outlook on the future of AR, and its reported benefits for efficiency in employees, this makes sense. Safran, an international corporation with three main sectors—aerospace, defense, and security—is one such company taking the plunge into incorporating AR in their business.
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.
Microsoft's augmented reality headset, the HoloLens, is getting a taste of the classroom with Lifeliqe's new mixed reality apps for kids.
Google's former driverless car boss Chris Urmson raised considerable funds to get his new startup company Aurora Innovation up and running. Axios initially reported that Urmson raised over $3 million to fund his brainchild in the wake of his Alphabet exit, according to an SEC filing.
If you've been longing since the '90s for the total Clueless experience of virtually trying on clothes, you missed out by not attending London Fashion Week earlier this year.
It may seem strange to find the director of engineering at a question-and-answer site all of a sudden pick up and lead a new driverless startup, but to Kah Seng Tay, both engineering tasks require building the right infrastructure to handle large amounts of AI data.
As a society, we seem to be moving backwards toward communicating by pictures only. Emojis and GIFs are today's cave paintings, and I, for one, am totally okay with that. To make this transition even more amazing, photo-editing app Facetune created a tool that lets us change our very own faces into moving emojis.
It's no secret Uber has had a pretty rough year, in no small part to being sued by Google. But Google doesn't seem to have intended a full lawsuit against Uber from the get-go, as news today shows Waymo pushed for arbitration against their former employee last fall, months before the news broke that they were suing Uber.
Every time Donald Trump tweets about a stock you own, Trigger Finance, or just Trigger—the app founded on the "if this, then that" rule to track and invest in the stock market—alerts you with a notification for real-time analysis of financial data.
Autonomous vehicles, aka self-driving cars, are not yet available to the public (at least not ones SAE Level 3 and higher). However, this doesn't make the jobs any less in demand. In fact, if you meet the right qualifications, you could make a lot of money in this industry.
HTC is working on another flagship device that's expected to be released in mid-April. After the disastrous reception of the recently released HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play, this new model could be the true HTC 10 successor we've all been waiting for.
While augmented reality is mostly in the minds of consumers in the form of Pokémon GO, AR has been popular behind the scenes, with AR companies marketing it as a tool to help business operations become more efficient. This business-to-business market is the target of the new app DOTTYAR, which "provides 3D visualization tools for augmented reality viewers."
LOOOK, a Seattle-based mixed reality and development studio, can now peer into the future with their new geotechnical engineering visualization application for Microsoft HoloLens.
A new Windows Insider Preview, version 15055, was released on Friday, March 10. Along with the normal collection of bug fixes and new features came a secret addition to the Mixed Reality Portal in the update. Windows Mixed Reality, along with Cortana, can now teach you how to use the platform, and, hopefully, usher in with it some understanding of what mixed reality is.
One of the biggest hurdles for making touchscreen text input easy on the user has been finding a simple way to move the cursor around. With all the advancements in mobile technology, we're still left fumbling around with tiny arrow indicators or magnifying glasses when we need to add a letter to a word we've already typed. But thankfully, developer Ouadban Youssef has found a better way.
Customer service just got a lot more interesting. Construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar just announced official availability of what they're calling the CAT LIVESHARE solution to customer support, which builds augmented reality capabilities into the platform.
As drug-resistant bacteria become more commonplace, researchers are looking for new antibacterial strategies to disrupt disease-causing microbes. Some scientists are working to create new drugs, while others are trying out drug combinations. Another group, however, are ditching pharmaceuticals altogether and experimenting with non-drug alternatives.
ProtonMail has long been the favorite of journalists and security-conscious professionals, with Edward Snowden the most famous example. But these days, everyone cares about anonymity, so it's no surprise that ProtonMail currently has over 2 million users. And now the service is even better.
A few days ago, there were flying piranha, snakes, and dragons roaming around freely at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, but they weren't real or even hallucinations—they were holograms brought to life with the Microsoft HoloLens.
Last month, Dr. Sung-Hoon Hong, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, announced at the Virtual Reality Summit in San Diego that Samsung would be moving into the augmented reality market. According to a recently published patent application, that move has begun.
Merge VR, a company mostly known for its virtual reality experiences, is moving into and creating an augmented reality experience that combines an iPhone or Android smartphone, a set of goggles to put your phone in, and a box about the size of a Rubik's Cube which looks more akin to the Lament Configuration seen in the Hellraiser film series. When used in concert with the smartphone and goggles, the toy cube, called Holo Cube, becomes one of many AR experiences.
Remember back in 2011–2012 when "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men was the bumping new single being played everywhere? Well, thanks to this robot created from a LEGO Mindstorm EV3 kit, and an acoustic guitar, you get to get the iconic "hey!" stuck in your head for the rest of 2017. You're welcome.
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.
Earlier this week, a mysterious tweet appeared on the HTC Twitter account of a picture containing the letter "U" topped with a tiny "for" and the date "01.12.2017" at the bottom. It is a pretty solid teaser, but for a company that has had a solid year with their Vive virtual reality headset, and all of the other technological appendages they have, it seems a bit ominous for them.
When the time comes to replace your car, you most likely have a checklist of criteria that you would like on the new one. Your car is possibly the most expensive possession you have—or the second-most expensive, after your home—so you want to make sure that you are not only getting what you want, but that you are getting the best deal possible.
I bet you've never put much thought into the water and ice dispensers that comes preinstalled in a lot of modern refrigerators and freezers. For chilled water or perfectly formed ice cubes, all you need to do is push the button and wait, right?
Unity released the Beta 5.6 on December 13 with a bunch of new upgrades in the works, including support for Vulkan, better instancing options, and more improvements to particles—to name just a few that are potentially relevant to the mixed reality community. And today, December 15, Unity has just released the EditorVR that we reported on a few weeks ago as a part of their "Experimental" builds.
Alphabet's moonshot factory, X (formerly "Google X"), is a secretive place, but it seems that when they are close to graduating a project, then they need to staff it up quickly. Watching for these job ads is one easy way to know they're close to budding off a baby.
Today, December 7, it was officially announced that Magic Leap has found their replacement for the recently departed Brian Wallace. Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz has tapped Brenda Freeman, former EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of National Geographic Channel, as their new Chief Marketing Officer.
One thing you'll find a lot of in the Windows Store for HoloLens is demos and mockups, but very few projects are as fully realized and fully-functioning as Muralize. Created by Magnopus, an all-female development team, Muralize first appeared in the Windows Store in late-November of 2016, and makes it easy and fun to create real-life murals using a HoloLens.
In recent years, wave after wave of technological advancement has led us down roads that are beginning to look more and more like science fiction stories. In their efforts to bring us from science fiction to science fact, Microsoft Research showed us a new communication medium called Holoportation earlier this year—and now they have found a way to make this highly complex holographic system far more mobile.
We've highlighted the projects of Wavelength Studios a few times over recent months for their work in the augmented and mixed reality space. Since receiving their HoloLens headsets, they've been hard at work on both development community projects as well as efforts for clients. This brings us to their latest work—a way to control holograms on the HoloLens with our pocket-based modern miracles, also know as smartphones.
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...
