Facebook may have shamelessly copied Snapchat and its camera effects for faces (as well as its World Lenses), but it might beat its social media competitor to virtual body augmentation.
The augmented reality feature in Pokémon GO is one of the key components that draw people in to the popular Android and iPhone game. Indeed, there's nothing quite like the sight of a Pokémon standing around in an otherwise uninteresting parking lot.
Puzzle games are a great way to kill time and exercise your brain in one fell swoop. They challenge you to think strategically and plan ahead, whether that's to create killer chain combinations for maximum points, or to plain old keep from getting killed.
If you're an Apple user and want an untethered virtual reality system, you're currently stuck with Google Cardboard, which doesn't hold a candle to the room scale VR provided by the HTC Vive (a headset not compatible with Macs, by the way). But spatial computing company Occipital just figured out how to use their Structure Core 3D Sensor to provide room scale VR to any smartphone headset—whether it's for an iPhone or Android.
We can't be in two places at once, but with virtual touch interfaces we can theoretically use a machine to act as our second body in a remote location. Over at MIT, Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer, with the advisement of Hiroshi Ishii, created an interface that makes this possible.
Augmented reality (AR) generally exists through the lens of our smartphones as information layered on top of what the camera sees, but it doesn't have to. Developer Jon Cheng worked with an indoor climbing facility in Somerville, Massachussetts, called Brooklyn Boulders, to turn rock climbing into a real-world video game where participants compete in a time trial to hit virtual markers on the wall.
A motion-based lock screen app called GestureLock was among the winner's at 2106's Android Experiments I/O Challenge, and it lets you set a specific motion (gesture) that you use to gain access to your locked phone.
The highly anticipated VR headset hasn't been on the market long, but there's an issue that has some consumers, and even government officials, concerned about the Oculus Rift. You probably guessed the issue surrounds privacy and the extensive, not-so-secret way that it's collecting your personal data. The privacy concerns came about as various customers and media outlets took notice of the rather lengthy Terms and Services that pop up once you strap yourself into the Rift headset.
If you don't have the time or patience to build a complete Ant-Man suit from scratch, there's another way to make a Ant-Man costume for Halloween. If you're more skilled with brushes and makeup rather than drills and cardboard, this is the Halloween DIY for you—especially if you're a fan of the Marvel universe.
Like most people, you probably use hand gestures when you talk, whether you wave your hands excitedly when discussing the latest episode of Game of Thrones or smack the back of your hand as you rattle off points during an argument. As your speech teacher probably told you, gesturing while talking is a great reinforcement tool—when used appropriately, of course.
Coffee! It's so amazing that J.S. Bach wrote a comic opera about caffeine addiction. Meanwhile, more than half of Americans 18 years or older start their day with a cup of the hot stuff. Most of us take coffee for granted, but it's a bean that can surprise you. Read on to understand more about coffee and how to take advantage of all that it offers.
BoomSound has spoiled me when listening to music on my HTC One M8, but when someone comes into my room, it can be a hassle trying to quickly pause or mute my music.
When you're capturing video with a DSLR, not having some type of stabilization system can lead to some pretty awful and shaky scenes. Camera instability is not only painful to watch, but breaks the fourth wall. Once that the invisible barrier between filmmaker and audience is apparent, it may break down that magical relationship between the two.
Admit it—at some point or another, you've wished that you had your own personal hovercraft. Don't worry, we've all been there. Well, a company called Aerofex wants to make a hovercraft that's way more than your standard leaf-blower-powered one, taking a queue from the swoop and speeder bikes from the Star Wars franchise, building their own sort of repulsorlift. This hover bike may not be quite as fast as the ones from Star Wars, but if the company has its way, it could be on sale by the end o...
Tomorrow's the 1st of April which means it's the one day of the year you can put aside the daily grind, and go at it Dwight Schrute and Jim Halpert style. Yes, there are easy apps to do your dirty work, but if you're old school and you like to do it the old fashioned way, here are 10 simple pranks for torturing your co-workers.
The Fourth of July, the celebration of US independence, as well as the second paid holiday of the summer, has arrived.
Snapchat's face tracking has certainly come a long way. This week, we've got an example of one effect that is nearly guaranteed to freak out your friends.
At least one hurdle to China-based augmented reality startup Nreal going mainstream in the United States may be about to be knocked down, thanks to behind the scenes legal movements Next Reality has uncovered.
Musical theater enthusiasts are about to enter a whole new world of melodic storytelling via augmented reality.
It's been almost two years since Apple added the TrueDepth depth-sensing camera of the iPhone X for Face ID and Animojis, but now Google is ready to upgrade the front-facing camera on its Pixel series.
The last six months have been filled with ups and downs for international music superstar Ariana Grande, but she's starting 2019 on a new, virtual foot, powered by Apple's iPhone TrueDepth camera.
A couple of months ago, I got the opportunity to get a sneak peek at a new media interface for ODG's R-9 Smartglasses, and the experience was impressive. Now, after weeks of keeping it under wraps, I can finally show off what I saw.
Snapchat is making it easier for developers and creators to build augmented reality effects in Lens Studio with a slew of new features, including seven face templates.
Snapchat has released three new augmented reality Lenses that boast uber-accurate face tracking courtesy of the TrueDepth camera on the iPhone X and ARKit.
Samsung introduced AR Emojis in the Galaxy S9, largely as a response to the iPhone X's Animojis. However, they appear to be taking on a life of their own by integrating a variety of custom AR Emojis. Among those are ones from the PyeongChang Olypmics and even Mickey Mouse.
On Wednesday, Apple released a new batch of Animoji characters that gives iPhone X users more virtual masks to play around with, but what many have been waiting for is an app that lets you put on a virtual mask of another person, not an animated emoji. Well, that day has finally arrived.
Bitcoin's wild price fluctuations — and by extension, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ethereum — can be terrifying if you're new to trading cryptocurrency. Seasoned traders, however, see these price movements as opportunities to maximize their holdings and profits. With Coinbase, you can trade cryptocurrencies more efficiently.
Animoji, short for animated emoji, was a focal point of the iPhone X presentation at the Sept. 12 Apple event. The reactions were split, to be sure, as some considered the attention to this feature on a $1,000+ smartphone to be a bit, well ... too much. As goofy as Animojis may seem at first, the tech behind them is undeniably impressive. In fact, it's possibly the most technically advanced feature of the iPhone X.
The app SketchAR is an easy, innovative way to trace what you want to draw onto the canvas of your choice. It was first released on iOS and Android Tango phones, but now, finally, it has been released on Microsoft's HoloLens.
Developers are really having a field day with Apple's ARKit, announced last month. Since it's release to developers, videos have been appearing all over the Internet of the different ways that developers are getting creative with the ARKit using iPhones and iPads.
At Vision Summit 2017, UK-based Rewind, one of the recent additions to the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Partner Program, showed off a HoloLens application called "Flight Deck" that genuinely blew me away. The idea of watching a live-action sports experience on a coffee table has been explored and mocked up, but Rewind not only has done it, they will be releasing it later this year.
Computer vision technology maker uSens, Inc. has unveiled uSens Fingo, a camera module that enables tracking of hand and head movements for PC-based, mobile augmented, and virtual reality platforms.
Listen up, fool! You can now get a (loud) nudge in the right direction by Mr. T, thanks to Waze. The navigation app has incorporated a few well-known voices over the past few years, but none have had us more excited than the addition of this beloved fixture of the 1980s. Waze made the announcement that Mr. T's voice would be joining the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Morgan Freeman via their company blog. That's the great news. The bad news is that Mr. T is only available for Waze users i...
Every time Donald Trump tweets about a stock you own, Trigger Finance, or just Trigger—the app founded on the "if this, then that" rule to track and invest in the stock market—alerts you with a notification for real-time analysis of financial data.
Judges at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Accelerator Pitch Event named Lampix the winner in the Augmented and Virtual Reality category, conference organizers announced today. The ninth annual competition, which took place over the weekend in Austin, Texas, pitted 50 startup finalists against each other in 10 technology categories.
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.
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.
A scary piece of malware just got a lot more terrifying this week. Security firm Comodo reports that "Tordow," a banking Trojan first uncovered in September 2016, received a massive update this December.
Today, December 7, it was officially announced that Magic Leap has found their replacement for the recently departed Brian Wallace. Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz has tapped Brenda Freeman, former EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of National Geographic Channel, as their new Chief Marketing Officer.
Logan's Run is one of my favorite movies of all time. The dialog is cheesy, the set design and special effects are wonky, and the main villain looks like he was conceived and built by an eighth grader in shop class—oh, and his name is Box.
