Just as the augmented reality industry grows, so too does the segment dedicated to creating experiences for the tools becoming available.
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 safe to say that we can call the annual ranking of AR investments a holiday tradition at Next Reality.
In just a few weeks, on May 29, the annual AWE (Augmented World Expo) conference will take place once again in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, California, to be exact).
Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that augmented reality (or, AR for short) will "change everything." But what, exactly, is augmented reality?
This time last year, we got our first taste of what mobile app developers could do in augmented reality with Apple's ARKit. Most people had never heard of Animojis. Google's AR platform was still Tango. Snapchat introduced its World Lens AR experiences. Most mobile AR experiences existing in the wild were marker-based offerings from the likes of Blippar and Zappar or generic Pokémon GO knock-offs.
Those of you lucky enough to snag a PlayStation 5 can pair your DualSense controller to Sony's PS Remote Play mobile app to stream and play your PS5 games from anywhere you want. DualSense support for Remote Play has been available on iOS since May 2021, and it's just now arrived on Android.
It's always fun to get an unexpected glimpse of the future, especially when that peek is so close you can actually feel the excitement of the new emerging dynamic.
We always know roughly when Apple events are coming, but when their new product events pop up, they're always a pleasant tech refresher from the Cupertino tech giant.
Old school media stalwart The New York Times launched its augmented reality news content in 2018 with a feature on the athletes of the Winter Olympics.
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.
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.
The big day for Snap that resulted in the debut of brand new augmented reality Spectacles smartglasses is turning into a big week.
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.
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.
Ever since the debut of the LiDAR Scanner in the latest batch of Apple's iPhones and iPads, the questions have swirled as to how this would benefit augmented reality interactions.
The enterprise applications powering the adoption of the HoloLens 2 are only just ramping up as developers continue to work with the still relatively new hardware.
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.
Who had Lil Nas X, blood-drop Nikes, and satan worship on your 2021 bingo card? In a story that's stranger than fiction, the "Old Town Road" rapper has ruffled some feathers with the video for his new single, "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)" filled with demonic imagery usually reserved for death metal bands.
As businesses flocked to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other video conferencing platforms to bridge the gap, we wondered aloud -- why aren't more companies leaning even more heavily on augmented reality?
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.
The true crime genre has long been popular on television and more recently on podcasts with shows like Serial.
We've been so worried about volumetric scans possibly robbing celebrities and performers of their agency and right to control their image that, somewhere along the way, we forgot that scans may not always be necessary to produce passable holographic performances.
When filtered through the prism of the top stories of the year, the business of augmented reality 2019 was defined as much by epic failures of AR startups as it was by the promising developments that propelled the industry forward into 2020.
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?
Let's be honest, nobody enjoys doing cardio — they tolerate it. That dreadful, loathsome feeling you experience when you're doing cardio workouts isn't unique to you, it's almost universal. Sure, it gets easier the more you do it, but there are some ways to make it better now.
After facing reports of financial troubles over the past month, Magic Leap came out swinging this week with a big push for the enterprise segment of AR, including a repackaged Magic Leap 1, a suite of enterprise apps, and updates to Lumin OS and its supporting development ecosystem. Oh, and its AR headset managed to win a starring role in the marketing juggernaut for the forthcoming Star Wars movie.
In our comparison of the best gaming phones in 2019, the winner actually surprised us. A phone that most people don't know about from a brand you probably haven't heard of ended up as the clear winner. But how? Well, it ticked so many flagship boxes despite its midrange price tag.
If you like the "Street View" feature in Google Maps, you'll love "Look Around" in iOS 13's Apple Maps. Overall, Look Around has more details than Street View and the animations are super smooth as you navigate down streets and pedestrian areas. While Look Around isn't available in every city yet, it'll work the same way no matter which iPhone you're using.
The latest immersive production from Magic Leap Studios finally got its debut on Monday at Siggraph, during which the company also released the app to the general public, so we took it for a spin.
When I first found out about Nreal, back in the spring of 2018, the most interesting thing about the company's story was the founder's background. Chi Xu, the CEO and founder of Nreal, previously worked at Magic Leap as a software engineer.
The week of the annual Consumer Electronics Show is supposed to be filled with good news for the augmented reality industry as AR headset and smartglasses makers show off their new wares.
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.
Because timing is everything, the latest entry in the location-based augmented reality gaming sweepstakes, Ghostbusters World, has arrived just in time for Halloween.
This week, Next Reality released the fifth and final set of profiles on the NR30 leaders in augmented reality, with this chapter focusing on the influencers in the industry.
Continuing our NR30 series this week, we focused on the leaders of the software development industry that make augmented reality experiences possible. In other news, two of the current leaders in making AR headsets, Microsoft and Magic Leap, are pursuing multiple verticals with their products, as both now appear to be interested in making AR headsets for the military.
Considering Rovio Entertainment quite literally owes its existence to Apple and the App Store, it may ruffle a few feathers that the company has opted to aim the augmented reality debut of its blockbuster Angry Birds franchise at Magic Leap instead.
With the new iPhones coming out, many see the current mobile market as just another epic battle between Samsung and Apple. But let's not forget there are many other phones that run Android. And when you start to sift through the specs, one stands out as a competitive alternative to the iPhone XR, the LG G7 ThinQ.
When rumors first emerged of Sony's Xperia XZ3, many of us wondered why. With the Xperia XZ2 just releasing in April of this year, why is Sony already releasing its successor? But now that it is officially announced, it makes a bit more sense, as what Sony is calling the XZ3 is actually more like the XZ2S.
Now that the Magic Leap One is officially out in the wild, users are already beginning to find out exactly how it works and what it might be useful for in the augmented reality space. But there are still other, more unique questions that remain unanswered.
