The mainstreaming of augmented reality won't happen overnight, but it's becoming increasingly clear that traditional media is leading the charge in the effort to introduce the public to immersive computing. A recent example came from none other than USA Today via its 321 Launch app.
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.
The long and slow road toward the actual release of the Magic Leap One appears to be accelerating, with a couple of new demonstrations of how the system works revealed in this week's creator's portal updates along with the company's developer documentation.
If you're not impressed with the current crop of AR content, and you're worried this may put a damper on the industry's growth, these stories should give you cause for some optimism.
On Wednesday, the tech world woke up to fairly shocking news with the announcement that AT&T would be the exclusive wireless carrier for the forthcoming Magic Leap One, as well as an investor in Magic Leap.
Last month was a whirlwind for the augmented reality industry, with the Augmented World Expo, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, and an exciting Magic Leap Twitch livestream all wrapping up before the ides of June. Now that we've had a chance to fully digest it all, we have a real sense of where the augmented reality industry is heading.
Location-based gaming pioneer Niantic has offered a preview of its augmented reality cloud platform that could change the immersive content game yet again.
LG is really coming strong at the flagship smartphone market in 2018. They have already released three new flagship caliber smartphones this year: the V30S ThinQ, V35 ThinQ, and the G7 ThinQ. But LG isn't done with flagship phones yet — they've just announced the V40 ThinQ.
During its presentation at Unite Berlin, Magic Leap gave attendees a crash course in developing experiences for Magic Leap One (ML1), we found out quite a bit more about how the device works and what we can expect to experience with the device.
At present, consumer-facing augmented reality is a mobile world, and Snapchat is making money on it through advertising partnerships.
The Augmented World Expo is winding down in Santa Clara, where Qualcomm, Vuzix, and Meta Company were among the companies making big announcements.
This time last year, computer vision company uSens introduced a stereo camera module capable of hand tracking. Now, uSens can achieve the same thing with just a smartphone's camera.
It will likely take a few more years before smartglasses are ready for primetime as component makers achieve the innovations necessary for consumer-centric device designs. Nevertheless, two technology companies are making steps in that direction as Qualcomm is rumored to be working on a chip dedicated to AR & VR headsets, while DigiLens has reduced the size of its waveguide displays for motorcycle helmets.
Consumers are chomping at the bit for augmented reality smartglasses from Cupertino's finest, but one market analyst is saying not so fast, Apple fans. Meanwhile, automotive AR is gaining speed, with the latest milestone coming courtesy of a major investment in waveguides by Continental. And although mobile AR apps have already arrived, retailer Target is taking a different approach. So why is Target tinkering with web-based AR? Answers below...
Noted analyst Gene Munster is predicting that Apple's initial entry into the augmented reality wearables category will be a year later than previous reports have estimated.
Despite numerous reports announcing its stateside arrival, "Final Fantasy Awakening" has yet to show up in the iOS App Store, much to the chagrin of millions of fans in the U.S. Unfortunately, the game seems to be stuck in soft-launch limbo, with no word as to when it'll land stateside. With a little hack, however, you can give this immersive game a try right now.
With all the recent activity around augmented reality, the possibilities involving immersive computing and commerce are quickly becoming obvious, and digital payments giant PayPal has no plans to sit on the sidelines
The price tag for the Microsoft HoloLens might be out of range for the average consumer's budget, but for enterprises, like BAE Systems, adopting the AR headset is yielding a return on the investment. And for those with even slimmer wallets, Best Buy just made the Lenovo Mirage, part of the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges package, more affordable.
It appears we're in the midst of an augmented reality art boom, because in the same month that the famed Christie's auction house launched its mobile AR app, leading art gallery and art seller Saatchi Art has also announced its entry into the AR space.
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.
In an effort to help its advertising partners close sales with its sponsored augmented reality camera effects, Snapchat has launched a set of e-commerce tools designed to encourage users to buy products directly in the app.
If bezel-less was the goal of OEMs in 2017, 2018 seems to be the year of the notch. Thanks in no small part to Apple's iPhone X, more and more smartphone manufacturers are designing their displays with this polarizing cutout. While many are frustrated with the trend, it's worth taking the time to consider what each phone gains with the unique design.
Mobile gamers are well aware of this, but zombie shooters have become pretty stagnant and unimaginative in recent years. Too many entries in this genre feature the same cookie-cutter gameplay, but thankfully, Gameloft aims to change this. The company has soft-launched Dead Rivals in a few countries, and with a little work, you can try the game yourself right now.
It turns out that the government of Saudi Arabia has managed to do something last month's Game Developers Conference couldn't — give us a few new glimpses of the Magic Leap One being worn by someone other than Shaq.
While you were busy browsing Instagram, composing tweets, or chasing Snapchat updates, an eight-year-old ARKit developer was hard at work on her first step toward taking over the tech world via augmented reality.
Following the surprise release of Magic Leap's SDK on Monday, March 19, Unity, Unreal Engine, and Mozilla followed up by announcing official partnerships with the company.
Just days after Bose did its best to frame a pair of glasses frames with spatial audio as "augmented reality," a patent application from Magic Leap, surfaced on Thursday, March 15, offers a similar idea, but with real AR included.
Not content to just be a provider of rugged smartglasses for enterprise users, DAQRI has made the jump into the AR software side of the industry with its new Worksense productivity suite.
It is finally happening. After not having a major update since August of 2016, HoloLens owners everywhere will soon get a number of new features added to their devices. At least if they are members of the Windows Insider program.
|UPDATE: The event is now over and we've learned all there is to know about the new Galaxy S9 and S9+. But if you're still interested in watching Samsung's presentation, we've left the replay video embedded below.
During the unveiling of its content partnership with the NBA, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz, with an assist from former player/current pitchman Shaquille O'Neal, described at least one of the ways fans would be able to experience sports using the augmented reality device.
Despite their sometimes fluffy reputations and occasionally ethically compromised viewpoints, tech evangelists are important, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The right passionate voice behind the right technology platform or piece of hardware can sometimes spell the difference between fostering a community of potential users and watching a product die on the vine.
This week, saw two companies leaning on AR to prop up their financial futures. On one hand, Apple made quite a bit of AR-related news ahead of its quarterly earnings report next week. On the other hand, Vuzix launched a pre-order program for its Blade smartglasses and closed the largest financing deal in the company's history to fuel its ongoing headset production.
It's tough to keep pace with Apple lately. As expected, only one day after the public release of iOS 11.2.5, the company released iOS 11.3 to developers. A day after that, Apple pushed it out to public beta testers, too. With new Animoji, more transparent battery information, Apple Music receiving music videos, and more, this update is the one to watch out for.
With the big reveal of the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition in December 2017, and now the update on Feb. 13, 2018, we no longer have to speculate as to what the augmented reality headset will look like or when (in general) it will be available.
Thanks to Metaverse, it has never been this easy to create your own AR game.
Between Renault Truck's testing of the HoloLens in factories and BMW promoting its newest model through Snapchat, the auto industry is hot for augmented reality to improve internal operations and engage consumers.
To the best of my recollection, Fruit Ninja was one of the first touchscreen games that appeared to really take advantage of the new paradigm of user input, turning the player's finger into a produce-slicing katana.
OnePlus just took the wraps off their new flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 5T. The phone has an impressive spec list, including a Snapdragon 835 processor, 6.01" FHD display at 2160 x 1080, 6 or 8 GB of RAM, 64 or 128 GB of storage, 3,300 mAh battery, and the awesome Dash Charging technology. This rapid turnover to a new device has many OnePlus 5 early-adopters angry and feeling duped.
In case you didn't already know, augmented reality is here. It's no longer just an idea in a cyberpunk novel. And while augmented reality has been around for a long time, the actual technology is finally catching up to the idea.
