At its height, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many auto showrooms to close their doors. As the pandemic persists, many consumers are still hesitant to let their socially distanced guard down.
We've reached the point in the trajectory of augmented reality's growth where AR advertising experiences are becoming commonplace tactics rather than rare experiments.
While Apple has been rather secretive about its work on AR wearables (despite the abundance of leaks revealing details about their unannounced devices), Facebook has been rather chatty about its plans for smartglasses.
Roughly a year ago, Samsung demoed its AR smartglasses prototype on stage at CES 2020. Now, videos showing off a new smartglasses model along with the company's imaginings of future AR experiences have surfaced through unofficial yet reliable channels.
The company augmented reality that Rony Abovitz was trying to build at Magic Leap apparently wasn't working out the way he hoped it would. That company, built on dreams, music, and future-looking entertainment, rather than truly new technology, came with a $2,300 price tag for a device using dynamics most mainstream consumers have never even tried.
Ever since China's Nreal unveiled its Light smartglasses at CES two years ago, an army of look-alikes have emerged from the Asian nation.
During a meeting in real life, you could ask non-essentials to exit the room temporarily so that you can speak to just a few privately, but now that conferences exist online, it requires a bit more finesse. You could start a new video call on Zoom or remove individual participants, but that makes it hard for those who left to join again. But there is a feature where you can just put some users on hold.
As the COVID-19 virus continues to spread, counties, cities, and states are closing down businesses, events, and schools that aren't absolutely necessary. Some companies around the US are recommending or requiring employees to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic. If you're stuck at home, there are apps and services to help you make it through a lockdown.
Some of the leading big tech companies are still working in the lab on actual products, but at least some of their leadership did have some thoughts to share on the future direction of the technology this week.
One of the hallmarks of augmented reality's coming of age is that the technology is starting to find a home in business categories that are less obvious compared to typical AR enterprise use cases.
The Unity 3D engine is not only responsible for facilitating the creation of 60% of AR and VR content but it also plays a significant role in producing the immersive stories that increasingly push the boundaries of cinema.
In his famous 1996 "Content is King" essay, Bill Gates predicted that content is where tech companies will make money on the Internet. The adage clearly holds true in the current phase of augmented reality experience.
We're a few weeks away from the fireworks associated with New Year's celebrations, but that doesn't mean you can't start a little early — in augmented reality.
Windows 10 passwords stored as NTLM hashes can be dumped and exfiltrated to an attacker's system in seconds. The hashes can be very easily brute-forced and cracked to reveal the passwords in plaintext using a combination of tools, including Mimikatz, ProcDump, John the Ripper, and Hashcat.
It might sound odd to call interior decorating exciting, especially if you're not a professional within that industry. But that's exactly what it is when combined with augmented reality.
Smartglasses from Apple have become the holy grail of augmented reality, and 2020 has been the rumored time horizon for the product's arrival for the past two years. The latest analyst report sheds more light on its potential debut next year.
There have been enough music artists releasing Snapchat AR experiences over the past week to fill a small festival. Count them with me: Bruno Mars. Gucci Mane. Kodak Black. Missy Elliot. Imagine Dragons. Panic! At the Disco.
Wearables startup North has made a smart move to get its Focals smartglasses into the hands of more consumers.
After hosting an augmented reality experience using its Snapchat Landmarker technology at the Statue of Liberty, Snap is now giving creators the opportunity to create their own Lenses with Lady Liberty.
Like clockwork, Apple has unveiled the latest additions to its ARKit tookit at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where ARKit first said hello to the world in 2017, as well as some new tools that take a direct shot at Unity, Unreal Engine, and others.
After announcing at Google I/O 2019 that augmented reality content would come to Search, Google revealed how it would make that happen with the latest round of updates to ARCore.
Two years ago, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the F8 Developers Conference keynote with augmented reality and the introduction of Facebook's AR camera platform, now known as Spark AR.
We've seen a variety of AR experiences related to athletic footwear over the years, but Puma is betting sneakerheads will buy into a version of interactive design where sneakers are the augmented reality experience
Gboard has come a long way from its roots as the "Google Keyboard" in the earlier days of Android. It's now the most popular, feature-rich, and useful keyboard app on the market. Google even includes quite a few themes right out of the box for Gboard — but what if you could have even more?
Move over, cosmetics companies. The athletic footwear industry wants to be able to give their customers the opportunity to try on products in augmented reality as well.
In recent years, many software publishers have tried to sell the business community on remote meetings via VR, but if social media chatter is any indication, it hasn't taken off in a big way just yet. However, for some, the notion of holding remote meetings using augmented reality, a medium in which you're still directly tied to the real world and not closed off in a blindfold-style VR headset, might be the better solution.
When computers have vision but people don't, why not have the former help the latter? That's the gist behind the Cognitive Augmented Reality Assistant (CARA), a new HoloLens app developed by the California Institute of Technology.
Amid the opulent and historic confines of Paris, Microsoft is now hosting an exhibit at a local museum that brings a historic map of a Normandy tourist destination to life in augmented reality.
Ingress, the godfather of location based-AR games developed by Pokémon GO creator Niantic Labs, is getting a new lease on life via Ingress Prime, a reboot of the game built on the Niantic Real World Platform.
Magic Leap has already entered the realm of entertainment and enterprise, but on now it has blazed its way into a new augmented reality frontier: fashion.
Snapchat is joining the ranks of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube, and Apple in the trend toward streaming original programming, but with a twist that rings true to its roots.
Influencers of augmented reality demonstrate expertise in their fields and outline a strong vision for the future that they evangelize to others. They help define the direction of the industry and identify others who foster and create innovation in the field.
One could argue that, at least for the moment, software development is more important to the augmented reality experience than hardware. Since a viable augmented reality headset has yet to emerge for the broader, mainstream consumer market, currently, the same devices that make texting and selfies possible are leading the charge to enable easy-to-use AR experiences.
The shifting sands of immersive computing, currently fluctuating between augmented reality and virtual reality, can be hard to navigate if you're only versed in one of the platforms. But a new series of videos from Leap Motion paints a picture of a near future world in which AR and VR will seamlessly merge together, forcing us to change the way we see both.
With summer in full swing, these Snapchat lenses are as hot as ever. With people celebrating the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Snapchat contests that earn could earn you a free ride to Comic Con, and the everyday innovation that comes out of Lens Studio, there's something for everyone here this week.
Between acquisitions, hirings, patent applications, and insider reports, all signs point to Apple building a smartglasses product that could ship as soon as 2020, but the company has not officially confirmed such plans.
Confirming a previous report from last week, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon X1 platform designed for augmented and virtual reality devices during an event at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara on Tuesday, with Meta and Vuzix among the first manufacturers to adopt it.
The premise of Jurassic World revolves around splicing genes to create new dinosaurs, so it is fitting that the location-based AR game is a clone of Pokémon GO merged with the DNA of the Jurassic Park franchise.
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.
China-based virtual reality headset maker ANTVR has decided to enter the augmented reality space, and to do so it's launching its headset on Kickstarter. The company claims that its new Mix AR device has a field of view that surpasses the Meta 2, the HoloLens, and others within a smaller form factor and at a fraction of the price. But there's a catch.
