Location-based gaming pioneer Niantic has offered a preview of its augmented reality cloud platform that could change the immersive content game yet again.
For those of us who love to multitask, picture-in-picture mode is a godsend. The feature, introduced in Android 8.0 Oreo, lets you enjoy videos in a floating window overlaid on top of another app. However, while the OS does have native support, only a select number of apps support the feature.
While it has been slower to arrive than a walker limping through thick Georgia mud, location-based augmented reality game Walking Dead: Our World finally has a confirmed launch date: July 12.
Augmented reality is really picking up steam as a tool for marketing departments to pitch their products.
Magic Leap shows up in the weirdest places. Last week, right at the start of World Cup fever, for some reason, the Magic Leap One appeared on a Brazilian television show.
On Tuesday, at the Unite Berlin developers conference, Unity unveiled new tools designed specifically for augmented reality that could literally raise the technology to the next level.
Apple's own Photos app received some pretty amazing updates in iOS 11, but does iOS 12 have what it takes to one-up last year's Photos improvements? We think so.
At present, consumer-facing augmented reality is a mobile world, and Snapchat is making money on it through advertising partnerships.
If you cover a particular area in tech long enough, you develop certain pet peeves, and one of mine happens to be devices that attempt to keep us wed to the Google Glass style of augmented reality. And while I remain mostly uninterested in such devices, one of these products recently earned my admiration and might work for you, too, under the right circumstances. It's called the Golden-i Infinity.
The availability of space for filming immersive content has just gotten bigger with the launch of Innovation Studios by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
For a while, Gmail only had one swipe gesture, and it could only perform one of two actions: Archive or Delete. Not that it wasn't useful — you could eliminate most spam emails in a matter of seconds by swiping left or right on any email in your inbox. But now, Google has finally added more custom actions to its swipe gestures.
Last week's Augmented World Expo felt like a distant memory by this Monday, as Apple unveiled ARKit 2.0 at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Certainly, this news would overshadow anything augmented reality this week as it nearly eclipsed AWE when early reports leaked of the toolkit's new superpowers.
Escape rooms, those real world puzzle games that challenge teams to solve a mystery and gain their freedom from a locked room, are all the rage right now. But augmented reality games such as The Lockdown could make them obsolete.
On Wednesday, June 6, the people at Magic Leap finally (FINALLY) decided to give the public a dedicated, slow, feature-by-feature walkthrough of the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition. How was it? About as good as it gets without actually getting to see what images look like through the device when wearing it.
Just a year after facing trade secret theft allegations from his former employer, ex-Meta Company employee Kevin Zhong and his new company are ready to ship the product that triggered the lawsuit.
Using the ARKit 2.0 announcement as its springboard, software maker Adobe is looking leap up to the level of Unity Technologies and Epic Games, the companies making the go-to tools for creating augmented reality experiences.
Most of us have, at one point or another, found ourselves glued to our smartphone in a trance-like state, totally unaware of what's around us. Well, Apple has a way to curb overuse with an awesome tool for iPhone starting in iOS 12. It can help nudge us away from our phones to spend more time attending to real-life matters.
Among iOS 11's many criticisms, one of the more surprising complaints came from parents worried that Apple wasn't doing enough to monitor and control their children's iPhone usage. Apple seems to have taken these issues to heart, as iOS 12 introduces new and improved parental controls to help encourage healthier mobile habits for kids.
As expected, Apple revealed today at the WWDC keynote that ARKit 2.0 will support multiplayer gaming support and persistent content, which will arrive this fall with iOS 12.
The Augmented World Expo is winding down in Santa Clara, where Qualcomm, Vuzix, and Meta Company were among the companies making big announcements.
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.
Google, Amazon, and Facebook are always listening. But what's worse? Hackers are listening, too. Windows PCs are particularly vulnerable, but with a few simple commands, a remote attacker can even take over the microphone on someone's Mac computer, streaming audio and listening to private conversations in real time without the victim's knowledge, abusing an overlooked security consideration.
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.
Electronics maker Epson is courting developers to its Moverio smartglasses with an updated software development kit (SDK) and integration with a web-based tool for publishing augmented reality experiences.
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.
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.
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.
When traveling or sightseeing, you may come across a landmark you can't quite identify and want to know what exactly it is and the history behind it. It could be a building, waterfall ... anything. If there are no signs around or they're in a different language, you'll have no idea what you're looking at. Fortunately, Google Photos can be your personal tour guide with the power of Google Lens.
In the wild world of Snapchat lenses, this week was an especially good one for cool effects. Lens-crafters (really hoping I can get that name to stick) have gotten a lot better at making non-gimmicky lenses that allow you to interact with them in new and unique ways.
In the arms race between ARKit and ARCore, Google scored a big win with the announcement of its Cloud Anchors shared AR experiences platform at Google I/O on Tuesday.
During Tuesday's keynote at the I/O developer conference, Google unveiled new capabilities for its Lens visual search engine and expanded the availability of the platform in smartphone camera apps.
Users of Epson's smartglasses can now tell their devices to "talk to the hand" when it comes to passwords and authentication.
On Monday, at its annual Build developer conference, Microsoft revealed two new apps for the HoloLens apps.
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.
For most carriers, "unlimited" data plans aren't really unlimited, and they still cost more than data limited plans. So while subscribing to music streaming services and storing your own music library in the cloud may be more convenient, it may eat your data up like candy. To keep that from happening, try downloading tracks from Apple Music for offline playback.
One of the better additions in the stock Android launcher is the Google Now page. Residing to the left of the home screen, this page presents a host of information based on the user's interests, which Google bases on analyzed data. Recently, the Google Now page design received a makeover which Nova Launcher users can now enjoy.
Facebook's shadiness when it comes to user privacy has never been much of a secret. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, however, has thrown the company and its practices into the limelight, with users taking their data more seriously than ever. If you're one of those users, you might want to check your "Location History" to see if and how Facebook's kept tabs on your whereabouts.
