This year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be fertile ground for augmented reality to show its worth, as both Walmart and Target have crafted immersive experiences designed to engage shoppers in the coming weeks.
With barely a whisper of augmented reality during the first day of its developer's conference, Samsung came out swinging on day two with the introduction of its version of the AR cloud and a partnership with Wacom that turns Samsung's S-Pen into an augmented reality magic wand.
This week, inside sources divulged details of how Apple nearly acquired Leap Motion, twice. Otherwise, companies offering or working on augmented reality technology had more successes than failures to talk about.
One of the funniest scenes from the teaser trailer for the Wreck-It Ralph sequel is the basis for the new pre-show augmented reality experience via the Noovie ARCade app.
Snapchat continues to deepen its roster of clients adopting its Shoppable AR Lens, with clothing giant Levi's and Disney becoming the latest brands to try on the e-commerce platform for size.
So far, consumer augmented reality headsets haven't found mainstream success. That's primarily because no manufacturer has managed to hit the sweet spot between slim form factor, performance, and affordability.
Electronic Arts is inviting players of The Sims Freeplay and their friends to visit the homes of their Sims in augmented reality with a new AR mode that supports multiplayer and persistent content using ARKit 2.0.
At its annual MAX event kicking off on Monday in Los Angeles, Adobe gave the audience a new preview of its forthcoming Project Aero augmented reality authoring tool during the keynote presentation.
Two companies armed with web-based augmented reality tools, Vertebrae and Shopify, are ready to help online retailers boost their sales.
Computer vision company Blippar has already dabbled with outdoor AR navigation, but now it wants to make it easier for people to make their way through indoor spaces with augmented reality.
If you aren't convinced that mobile augmented reality apps need occlusion (or you don't know what the word even means), you really need to watch the latest video from AR cloud startup 6D.ai.
It wasn't Christmas, but for Amazon Prime members, it was darn close: Amazon Prime Day, one of the biggest shopping days of the year, came and went earlier this week. Unfortunately, there weren't many Prime Day-specific deals to be had for augmented reality fans, but that doesn't mean AR-loving Amazon Prime members were completely left out.
While many of you were off surfing and lounging on some sandy beach or trying to figure out how to balance work with sky-high summer temperatures, I've been talking to all the companies that make augmented reality what it is today.
When it comes to mass adoption, augmented reality is still primarily a mobile world, so Google is pitching its own ARCore flavor of mobile AR to the education and marketing segments.
With a new version of its ARCore in the wild and more than 30 devices now supporting it, Google is helping beginners get up to speed with augmented reality.
Regal Cinema's augmented reality magazine Moviebill enjoyed a big debut in April and it has its sights set on an even bigger (virtually) outing with its next edition.
On Tuesday, at Google's I/O developer conference, the company announced a huge update to its ARCore augmented reality toolkit that matches the latest features of ARKit, and surpasses Apple's AR platform via support for shared experiences.
Augmented reality is expected to eventually change everything, and the prevailing view is that those changes will be for the better. The converse view, however, is that the technology will further erode privacy.
Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges! That is, unless they have augmented reality content embedded in them and give us full access to Facebook's annual F8 developers conference — in that case, yes, we'll take all the badges.
Google's AI investment arm, Gradient Ventures, has joined a $10.5 million round of funding for Ubiquity6 and its platform for shared augmented reality experiences, just weeks after Google's GV fund backed a competing AR cloud platform.
Despite the wide availability of markerless augmented reality experiences for mobile devices, there is still a market for scanned triggers for content, as evidenced by the new image recognition capabilities on Facebook's Camera AR platform.
Location services provider Mapbox is giving developers a means for building location-based AR apps and multi-user experiences with its new Mapbox AR toolkit.
Apple's Animoji on the iPhone X might allow you to use your own facial movements to control your favorite emoji, but Samsung is looking to make you the focus of the interactive icon with the introduction of AR Emoji. Instead of a dragon or an alien, Samsung wants your unique look to define your avatar.
We already know that the connection between virtual and augmented reality is pretty tight, with tools like Unity making porting some apps between the two platforms fairly frictionless. But there are some things currently going in VR that just don't need to come to the world of AR.
San Francisco-based 6D.ai is preparing to launch a beta of its AR cloud platform that's capable of constructing a real-time dense mesh from crowdsourced data for use in 3D mapping and multi-user AR experiences.
After devoting a number of resources toward developing VR content to modernize the delivery of its news content in recent years, The New York Times is expanding its capabilities to include augmented reality as well, a mission outlined in a manifesto published on Thursday.
Facebook just ratcheted up its ongoing augmented reality war against the competition by stealing away Google's director of product for AR, Nikhil Chandhok. In his new role, the executive will serve as Facebook's director of product on the company's Camera/AR team.
A new survey of game developers paints a somewhat less than rosy future for augmented reality gaming, but there's still some hope for its long-term prospects.
While it may seem to some like investors are just throwing their money at augmented reality companies simply because the tech is heavily hyped, these money managers do actually want to see a return on their investments.
On Tuesday, original design manufacturer (ODM) Flex used the CES spotlight to help introduce a smartglasses reference design aimed at companies interested in bringing their own enterprise AR headsets to market.
It seems fitting that Time magazine's first augmented reality cover is an issue guest edited by Bill Gates, since the company he founded is currently leading the AR charge via the HoloLens.
They say if you don't believe, you don't receive. Therefore, I'll choose to believe that this holiday season, Santa's elves have learned how to code in Unity and leverage ARKit to deliver these jolly AR apps for helping children of all ages virtually decorate their homes.
Just one day before the retail release of the iPhone X, Apple CEO Tim Cook trumpeted the company's continued success during an earnings call with reporters conducted via telephone. And while he rolled out the expected glowing praise for the new iPhone, what stood out most was his effusive language describing Apple's new focus on augmented reality.
The bandwagon for NFL teams using augmented reality to engage fans isn't exactly full, but it is starting to get a bit crowded.
Cyclists of the world, new AR glasses are here to improve your rides. Possessing 2 GB RAM, a quad-core CPU, GPS, 16 to 32 GB of storage, an accelerometer, camera, gyroscope, magnetometer, barometer, Bluetooth, speaker, WiFi, and a mic, these aren't your regular UV-blocking sunglasses. Called the Everysight Raptor AR glasses, these shades project all of the information a cyclist could need to optimize their rides.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus has practically guaranteed that the virus, along with the phrases "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," will rank among the top search terms of 2020. USA Today combined the phrases in its latest augmented reality experience, which quizzes your knowledge in the best practices of social distancing.
Apple's first AR wearable might not arrive until 2022, but we may have an early preview of what it will be like to wear a pair of its smartglasses via iOS 14.
Alongside Sesame Street, the Dr. Seuss universe has been a constant presence in the formative years of several generations of children in the US.
Following its dominance as a provider of silicon for smartphones, Qualcomm is eager to replicate that ubiquity with not only processors for augmented reality headsets but also reference designs to give device makers a head start.
As augmented reality continues its collision course with mainstream adoption, the technology will now have a role in one of the most anticipated boxing matches of the year.
