This morning, in an early morning session at GDC 2017, Brandon Bray, a senior program manager lead at Microsoft, revealed a mixed reality headset made in collaboration with Acer—a different headset than the one we saw from Acer at CES 2017 earlier this year. Also at the event, the name for Microsoft's holographic system seems to have changed from Windows Holographic to Windows Mixed Reality.
In a press event this past week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, Unity Labs, the experimental and forward thinking arm of Unity, announced an upcoming toolset for developers in the augmented, mixed, and virtual reality space called the XR Foundation Toolkit (XRFT).
Today at Microsoft Build 2017 in Seattle, Washington, ScopeAR announced that their mixed reality smart instruction development platform, Worklink, will now work with the Microsoft HoloLens in addition to the mobile devices that are currently supported.
Early this morning, Unity held their keynote at GDC 2017 in the InterContinental San Francisco hotel. During the event, they talked about their upcoming roadmap and many changes that are coming down the pipe. This list included the lighting explorer, progressive lightmapper, the new 4K video player, native support for Vulkan graphics, TextMesh Pro integration, and the one that really excites me as a HoloLens developer—dynamically/runtime created navigation meshes.
If not the future of computing in general, augmented, virtual, and mixed reality certainly will change the world of gaming. If you want to try your hand at shaping this evolved medium, the Unite Europe conference posted a talk that explains the first things you need to learn to develop holographic games.
Autodesk offers some of the most popular software for computer-aided design (CAD) projects, which involve all sorts of 3D rendering. Their tools are clearly suited for use with the Microsoft HoloLens, but so far very little supports HoloLens development outside of Unity. Why is that?
Much of the excitement around the HoloLens 2 has moved on to many wondering when we'll finally be able to get our hands on what is now the best augmented reality device on the market.
Avegant Corporation has begun shipping display development kits based on its light field technology that other companies can use in their augmented and mixed reality devices.
Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4.21, bringing a number of new features, bug fixes, and improvements for augmented reality development, including deeper support for Magic Leap One and the addition of support for the Windows Mixed Reality platform and headsets.
In an early morning blog post, Microsoft announced the expansion of the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Partner Program. This announcement comes on the tail of an expanded HoloLens release over the last few months to many countries outside the initial US and Canada.
In December of last year, UK-based Zappar successfully raise $84,356 for their ZapBox mixed reality headset—over $50,000 more than their goal. Well, they just blew that sum out of the water when they announced this morning that they've closed a Series A round of funding with $3.75 million.
While Unity is already the leading 3D engine for augmented reality content in terms of volume, the announcement of Project MARS, a new augmented reality authoring tool, at Unite Berlin in June promised to expand AR development to a whole new audience of designers and other non-coders this fall.
After many months of endless speculation over the mysterious augmented reality platform Magic Leap, software engineers worldwide have been waiting for any news of what development environment this amazing technology might use. Thanks to Paul Reynolds, the former Magic Leap Senior Director of SDKs and Apps, we no longer have to guess. Just like existing mixed, augmented, and virtual reality platforms, developers will be able to use their experience with Unity and the UNREAL engine.
While most people have only begun hearing the term augmented reality in the last year or so, AR has been around in some form since the early '90s. It all started with heads-up displays (HUDs) for pilots to see instant information in their visors, but has graduated to a far more useful and widespread technology thanks to the advancement of computers and, more recently, smartphones.
At the WinHEC Shenzen 2016 Keynote, Microsoft showed off a system running Windows 10 smoothly on an ARM processor. This could be great news for developers of mixed reality software.
The release of iOS 11 and ARKit is probably the biggest event for mobile developers since the advent of the App Store.
Want to write Java applications but don't know beans about object-oriented programming? Never you fear. This free video tutorial from TheNewBoston will help you on your merry way to accomplishing just that. Specifically, this lesson will demonstrate how to work with the MouseLook class for a free look effect in Java game development. For detailed instructions, watch this programmer's guide.
Want to write Java games and applications but don't know beans about object-oriented programming? Never you fear. This free video tutorial from TheNewBoston will help you on your merry way to accomplishing just that. Specifically, this lesson will demonstrate how to work with sprites when doing game development. For detailed instructions, watch this programmer's guide.
This tutorial covers the ABC's of getting started in Web Development. Mike Lively shows you how to get a server, a free HTML editor, and free FTP Software.
As one of the leading 3D engines for augmented reality development, a new release of Unity is a significant event that carries the potential to facilitate huge leaps forward in AR content creation.
While the consensus among some in the augmented reality community is that the Microsoft HoloLens is the best device available at present, it also remains the most cost-prohibitive option, with the development edition costing $3,000.
In order for software developers to do their jobs as new hardware reaches the market, they will need the right tools to get their projects off the ground and into augmented and mixed reality devices. There have been completely new approaches to development when it comes to AR and MR, and these are some of the faces behind them.
Most virtual and mixed reality headsets offer unnatural controls, making you use awkward movements or physical devices to control the holographic elements in your direct view. This doesn't make a lot of sense because using your hands is more natural, so Manus developed a set of gloves that solves that problem entirely.
"Necessity, not novelty," is a phrase I use often when it comes to HoloLens development. It would be fair to call it my mantra, or mission statement, as I prototype and explore software creation on this new frontier of mixed reality.
Germany-based Augmented reality software maker Re'flekt has added a new tool to its enterprise app development platform that makes it simpler to link AR content to physical objects.
The business of enabling the development of augmented reality experiences appears to be as lucrative as AR app development itself.
Magic Leap's recent flurry of patent applications prompted us to look around for any trademark movements from the company, and it turns out that the Florida-based company has been quite busy.
In recent weeks, Unity has made a few great leaps forward for HoloLens development. These new features will increase iteration speed inside Unity and quickly increase the output of applications in the mixed reality space. Of these new features, let's take some time to talk about Holographic Emulation and why this will do so much for the development community.
Don't Miss: The Difference Between Virtual, Augmented, & Mixed Reality
The Easter Bunny is about to get his first experience with mixed reality. Virtual Reality Los Angeles (VRLA) will host its third annual expo in April, and this year's attendees will get to experience a fun Easter egg hunt sponsored by AfterNow and VRLA, in partnership with mixed reality king, the Microsoft HoloLens.
The Unreal Development Kit contains tools and functions which can be of great use to someone interested in developing games with Papervision 3D. This tutorial shows you how to build a transporter using the UDK and then work with it in your Papervision project.
Better known among consumers for its virtual reality apps, Jaunt is now pivoting toward solutions for augmented reality developers.
At Build 2017, the annual developer's conference, Microsoft featured a Windows Mixed Reality Academy. This class was designed to get a developer started creating Mixed Reality experiences quickly. For those of us already developing for the Microsoft HoloLens, while the class — which is now available on the Microsoft website — did offer our first real chance to work with the new Acer HMD, there was not much depth.
Soon, users will no longer need an expensive headset or even a smartphone to experience mixed reality. The new Microsoft update will be bringing mixed reality applications to every Windows computer next month. This new upgrade to Windows 10 named the Windows 10 Creators Update.
Today at the Unite '16 conference in Los Angeles, Unity's Timoni West and Amir Ebrahimi showed off its new virtual reality authoring and world editor, EditorVR, using the HTC Vive. Coming in December to Unity is a version of its editor that works inside a VR headset, which will change the way developers interact with the worlds they build—even if they aren't building for VR.
We're on the verge of an amazing evolution of technology where we can work and play in virtual worlds that merge with our own—or let us escape into our imaginations entirely. But creating virtual, mixed, and augmented reality experiences requires resources and hardware that not everyone has access to. If you want to build something awesome with the Microsoft HoloLens (or one of the other awesome platforms), we want to help you do just that.
Did you know that you can unlock many hidden features and tweak several hidden options by installing a CHDK or Canon Hack Development Kit onto your Canon camera? This walkthrough will give you some insight into the different benefits of the CHDK and how to unlock your camera by installing it.
Null Byte readers are no strangers to the powers and benefits that come from learning how to code. By knowing only a handful of programming languages and platforms, an intrepid developer can create everything from best-selling apps to spyware in the comfort of his or her own home.
At the end of June, Unity 2017.1, the newest version of the popular 3D development engine, went live. And with that release, it brought out some very cool new features like Timeline and Cinemachine, to name a few. Now, for those of us that develop with Unity and follow the beta program closely, these features are not new at all. What is more likely the case is that we have spent a good deal of time using these features for a few months and even possibly helped iron out a few bugs.
The Unreal Development Kit lets you create terrains and add textures. This tutorial shows you a few tips to making a terrain, and then demonstrates how you can take this textured terrain and port it into Papervision 3D for your own projects.
