Independent game developer PlayFusion announced today a partnership with NEXON Korea Corporation, resulting in a Series A preferred share round to fund development of their entertainment platform. PlayFusion's platform applies augmented reality, Internet of Things (IoT), and audio recognition to Lightseekers, an original property that combines mobile gaming with smart action figures, trading card games, and other media.
A market research report, posted on February 27, 2017, forecasts that the image recognition market will grow to nearly $40 billion worldwide by 2021. The market, which includes augmented reality applications, hardware, and technology, generated an estimated $15.95 billion in 2016. The report estimates the market to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 19.5% over the next five years.
You've likely seen light-up musical keyboards that teach you how to play a song with visual cues, but few of those devices exist and have a limited number of songs you can actually learn. But Karl Baumann and his HoloLens Hackathon team figured out that in mixed reality, you can learn music with visual cues with any piano.
While the early stages of any new technology always seems amazing because of the utilitarian, almost altruistic software concepts it inspires, mixed and augmented reality will still see its fair share of corporate apps. That might be a good thing, however, as Volvo's plan goes past general information and advertising to make a truly helpful tool for prospective car buyers.
Pong, one of the simplest video games ever created, has managed to evolve in some crazy ways over time, from the original basic 2D version and colorful Breakout sequel, to the PlayStation game with power-ups and 3D graphics, and now Cyberpong VR—a virtual reality game on the HTC Vive—where you act as the paddle instead of just moving it into place with a controller.
The words of three of tech's most important executives in the last 48 hours are providing some valuable insight into the near term future of augmented reality and the cloud infrastructures that support it.
Next to Apple, Snap is currently one of the most important companies on the planet in terms of delivering products that are moving augmented reality into the mainstream. That's why it's no surprise that Facebook, which is also focused on AR and tried to acquire the company for $3 billion several years ago, duplicates many of the smaller company's features.
Now that the dust has finally settled on Microsoft's big HoloLens 2 announcement, the company is circling back to offer more granular detail on some aspects of the device we still don't know about.
Like many things associated with Magic Leap, the start of the company's first annual L.E.A.P. conference got off to a unique start. Taking the stage on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles, the company's CEO, Rony Abovitz, gave a brief introductory speech welcoming the crowd and outlining the mission of Magic Leap.
With the software installation out of the way, it's time to build the framework within which to work when building an augmented reality app for Android devices.
If you're a regular reader of Next Reality, you're more likely to spread the joy of augmented reality than most others. But it can be difficult to introduce newbies into the AR fold if you don't give them exactly the right starting point in terms ease-of-use and affordability. But fear not, oh gift-giving AR pioneer, we're here to help!
And so it begins... CES 2017 is upon us! This is a very exciting time for those who are looking out for the newest innovations and releases from the world of technology. I said this was going to be a fun week, and here we start it with a bang from smartglasses developer Osterhout Design Group (ODG).
As one of the leading makers of processors for smartphones, Qualcomm further bolstered its place in the market with the announcement of the Snapdragon 865 earlier this week.
Augmented reality gaming startup Tilt Five is ready to reinvent old school Dungeons & Dragons-style games for the modern age with its augmented reality headset and tabletop game system.
Having already solved for functionality and form factor, Nreal appears poised to pull ahead of its consumer smartglasses competition as the third piece of the puzzle now falls into place.
The saga of augmented reality startup Meta appeared to be at end, but there are new developments unfolding in real time that may either sink Meta deeper into trouble, or provide a tenuous lifeline for the beleaguered augmented reality company.
By now, you already know that the Magic Leap One ships with an array of apps to immediately get you accustomed to operating in your new spatial computing reality. The first one we're going to focus on is Screens, an app we told you about previously, but only now have managed to try for ourselves.
When you drive along the deceptively sedate streets of Silicon Valley, there are few hints that all those nondescript office parks and low-rise buildings contain the very future of the planet, but they really do. On a recent trip to tech's epicenter, I found that out firsthand when I got to visit the offices of Meta, the startup that produced the Meta 2 augmented reality headset.
In what's becoming something of a regular occurrence, Magic Leap has yet another internal, unforced error on its hands. Thankfully, this time it's not about legal skirmishes or theft, but a rather unusual break from company protocol that has been quickly swept under the rug.
So after being teased last Christmas with an email promising that the Meta 2 was shipping, nearly a year later, we finally have one of the units that we ordered. Without a moment's hesitation, I tore the package open, set the device up, and started working with it.
There was a time when building a website required coding knowledge. Eventually, software came along that made the process easier, and then services like Squarespace made it dead simple for even a technical novice to design a website.
As the level of data being generated grows exponentially, past the Information Age and into the coming Hyper-Information Age of immersive computing — as resistant as many of us are to the idea — personal data security is becoming a necessary consideration in our everyday lives. Recognizing this, Mastercard, Qualcomm, and Osterhout Design Group have teamed up to show what secure shopping could look like in the very near future with iris authentication.
When Apple announced their ARKit platform in June, they immediately staked the claim to the largest augmented reality hardware platform, with millions of iPhones and iPads compatible with iOS 11 becoming AR devices this fall.
Facing claims of misappropriation of trade secrets and confidential information by Meta Company, DreamWorld, led by Meta's former employee, Zhangyi "Kevin" Zhong, has fired back with a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Coming up at the end of May is the world's largest conference and expo dedicated to all things augmented and virtual reality, the Augmented World Expo, more commonly known just as AWE. And this year, a few of us from NextReality are going to be there.
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.
It's safe to say that we can call the annual ranking of AR investments a holiday tradition at Next Reality.
The still-unfolding story of China's Nreal augmented reality startup continues to develop, with each turn uncovering another unexpected wrinkle.
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.
In a world full of augmented reality camera effects apps, one app is going in a more social direction.
While Snapchat is no stranger to location-based AR scavenger hunts, the app's new world-facing game adds some environmental understanding to the mix.
Silicon Valley-based startup 8th Wall has spent much of the last few years building a reputation for enabling AR experiences that are platform agnostic via web browsers and mobile apps. Now, 8th Wall is promising to give developers the freedom to build and host AR experiences from anywhere via a simple web browser.
A relatively unknown musician from the early-'70s that's gained popularity stateside over the last ten years just got the remastered treatment with two new reissues available on CD and 180-gram vinyl. And they're available right now.
When it comes to the athletic footwear retail game, it's just not enough to just sell shoes anymore.
The recent industry whispers in augmented reality are mostly about Apple and its rumored fashion-friendly smartglasses, but one company isn't waiting for the iPhone heavyweight to enter the fray.
Now that Lego Movie 2, a film about an imaginary world made of plastic bricks existing parallel to the real world, is in theaters, it's the perfect time to shop for Lego apparel at a store modeled after that world.
Already a powerhouse for its graphic design tools, Adobe is making a run at the 3D content creation realm dominated by Unity and Epic Games by acquiring software maker Allegorithmic.
With Pokémon GO as its cash cow and the forthcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Niantic Real World Platform promising future revenue streams, Niantic has convinced investors to bet on its flavor of augmented reality
A year after making a splash at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with Amazon Alexa integration, smartglasses maker Vuzix is bringing a notable weather app to its Blade smartglasses for the 2019 edition of the conference.
Nearly a year to the day after the unveiling Magic Leap One, Magic Leap has dropped another update to the Lumin OS that runs the device.
