Google and Microsoft have both established platforms and hardware for emerging digital realities, but Apple, true to form, hasn't had much to say on the subject. They've shown interest in augmented reality, and we've seen patent filings that indicate research and development, but a recent rumor points to that research ending up in your car instead of a rose gold headset.
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?
We're already glimpsing the future when we look at mixed reality through a headset, but is the real evolution of this technology something that will exist as part of our bodies? As intense as that may sound, TechCrunch's Jay Donovan offers compelling reasons why it's not such a crazy idea:
Augmented reality (AR) holds much promise for how we'll interact with technology in the future, but we still have many hurdles to clear before that dream fully comes to fruition.
Android 6.0 introduced a new feature called Direct Share that allows apps to pin a more specific set of targets to Android's share menu. You've probably seen it already—messaging apps will allow you to share a file directly to a specific contact instead of just to the main app, and there are several other implementations like this.
While there are tools online that let you turn photos into interesting emoji art, and mobile apps that let you create emoji mosaics, none do it better than an iPhone app by second verse, which makes it a super easy, highly customizable process.
Hidden deep in WhatsApp's emoji database is a middle finger emoji, and there's a really easy way to use it. Much like Spock's "live long and proper" Vulcan salute, this one can be used simply by copying and pasting the emoji from our tweet. Note that the emoji, for now, does not display properly on iOS devices, but it can still be sent. So if you're in a conversation with an Android or computer user, they'll see it just fine.
With audible alerts and subtle vibrations, the Apple Watch makes it difficult to miss incoming notifications. But soon enough you'll realize that not every notification is worth receiving on your Watch and can ultimately render the experience annoying under particular circumstances—like when your popular Instagram post floods in notification after notification.
While some of the additions to the emoji keyboard in iOS 8.3 have been criticized for actually doing the opposite of their intended purpose, they've been well received overall. But the biggest winner of the new emojis was one that actually wasn't even released—the "Vulcan salute" emoji.
When you see a color depicted on your computer, smartphone, or tablet, odds are it was processed as a hex triplet before it was rendered. Most modern websites and operating systems use a hexadecimal coding system to signify certain colors, and these are represented as 6 letters and numbers.
Bacon isn't hard to cook on the stovetop, but every cook who's been hit by splattering fat knows it's not the most pleasant kitchen task to tackle. If you're cooking bacon for a lot of people, you can avoid this by cooking it in the oven on a roasting rack, DIY or otherwise.
Thanks to its longevity and familiarity among web designers, Flash is still alive and thriving, but HTML5 is catching up since it can render faster in web browsers, can be customized by developers on a per platform basis, doesn't need a plugin to run, and is less vulnerable than Adobe Flash Player to attacks (for the moment).
Many manufacturers add a custom skin on top of their Android builds, but none are more widely praised than HTC's Sense UI. The general consensus among Android users says that HTC's visual tweaks are done in good taste, and the features they add are both functional and warranted.
When you're on a limited data plan, bumping up against your monthly cap is a major concern. Overage fees are incredibly high these days, and being throttled down to 2G coverage almost renders a smartphone completely useless.
The switch from Dalvik runtime to ART in Android Lollipop has rendered the Xposed Framework useless until a new version is released, but Xposed isn't the only way to mod a phone.
If you're like me, things just seem to look better when they're symmetrical. While Android's status bar icons are indeed weighted against the notifications that show up on the left side of this area, the balance still seems skewed to the right.
While the Quick Settings feature on Android is great, manufacturers like HTC, LG, and Samsung took it a step further in their custom skins. For instance, on Samsung devices, you can access the most common toggles at the top of the Notification tray, and you can tap once to access more tiles. This makes toggling cellular data, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi a fast and painless process.
With an Android device left at its default settings, your location history is automatically recorded. You can view and manage this data, but the simple interface of points plotted on a map leaves a lot to be desired.
The official release of iOS 8 was highly anticipated, but the truth is it may have been a little premature on Apple's part. Since its debut only a week ago, plenty of bugs and issues have been reported across the various compatible iPhone models.
Apps that save your passwords have been around for quite a long while. But apps that complete the entire login process automatically? Now that's a different story.
Google may have decided to back HTML5 for YouTube, but much of the internet still relies heavily on Adobe Flash content. While the Chrome browser for Android is unable to play Flash-based content like Amazon Instant Video streams, some third-party browsers will.
Replacing your wallpaper is one of the easiest and quickest things you can do to keep your device from going stale, but it goes way beyond just picking an image from your gallery. If you use the Google Camera, you can create some really awesome 3D lens blur backgrounds, but what if you want more wallpapers on your wallpaper?
Over the course of the past few years, many websites have begun offering up a mobile-friendly HTML 5 version of their content. Videos that once required Adobe's Flash can now be played on any modern mobile web browser.
Rooting your Nexus 7 tablet is now easier than ever. Previous rooting methods required connecting your tablet to a computer and using any one of a number of programs and/or ADB commands. Now, it's as easy as downloading an app on your phone and tapping one button.
When the Nexus 5 was released, a new version of Android came along with it called KitKat. In the 4.4 update were some fancy new UI elements, one of the most noticeable being the translucent decor. By that, I mean the status and navigation bars being semi-transparent.
If mainstream media has taught us anything, it's that being beautiful can get you ahead in life. The notion isn't necessarily correct, but it's what the general consensus accepts and it seems to hold quite a bit of weight (no pun intended) in the western world.
When our Nexus 7s upgraded to KitKat, one key piece of functionality was lost in the mix—Flash support. Of course, even before that we never had official support on the Nexus 7, but hacks seemed to do the job just fine. As it stands now, Google remains on the warpath against Flash, opting instead for HTML5 use, specifically in Chrome (where Flash never worked anyway), and of course Adobe stopped supporting Android long ago.
I have Verizon, America's largest 4G LTE network, as my cell service provider, but there are times when I find myself with a pretty shitty signal, rendering my upload and download speeds substantially slower than usual.
Introducing a unique way to share photos and videos among friends and family, Snapchat was the big hit of 2013 (despite its many flaws). Thanks to its ephemeral nature and lack of third-party sign-in integration, it quickly grew into a multibillion-dollar company in the span of just 12 months.
If you're like me, then you were a little disappointed after updating your Nexus 7 to KitKat and realizing that not much has changed. The old Jelly Bean look still occupied your home screen, and there wasn't really anything noticeably new overall. All of that waiting and anticipation only to be left high and dry.
In a previous softModder tutorial, we installed CyanogenMod on our HTC Ones to approximate the look and feel of the Google Edition HTC One. Unfortunately, this rendered Beats and HTC's ImageChip (among other things) useless.
If you've ever listened to your loved ones sing in the shower or watched a few minutes of American Idol, you would think that the majority of the population is tone deaf. In reality, only about 4 percent of the world's population suffers from tone deafness, or the inability to distinguish between different pitches. Che Guerava, Charles Darwin, and Ulysses S. Grant were all tone deaf.
Inverting colors on your mobile device not only saves battery life, but also helps prevent straining your eyes, especially during the nighttime. Bright white screens interfere not only with your eyes, but with your sleeping patterns, as well. The bright lights greatly reduce your melatonin, a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain that helps you go to sleep. Thus, the onset of sleep is delayed and the possibility of deep sleep is reduced greatly.
Robert Templeman from the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana and several of his friends from Indiana University recently developed an Android application that is capable of gathering pictures and videos from mobile devices in order to reconstruct a user's environment in 3D. The malware would come coded inside of a camera application that the user would download. The malware, called PlaceRaider, would then randomly take pictures throughout the day and carefully piece them together ...
The new Pyro FX in Houdini 10 are very impressive with improved workflow. The Pyro FX are great for creating 3D fire and smoke effects. And in this video tutorial series, you will learn the Pyro FX workflow in-depth and the parameters used to create fire and smoke effects. You will also see how volumetric data is created and recorded, and how to visualize it.
Learn to animate a logo in this rather casual (and occasionally cryptic) video demonstration that combines After Effects with audio portions in Sony Vegas. Much of the final product has already been rendered so this tutorial is essentially a walkthrough of the various parts of the project.
One of the more exciting augmented reality announcements Apple made during its WWDC keynote on Monday came in the form of Object Capture, a new 3D scanning feature coming to macOS Monterey.
Have you been noticing SpaceX and its launches lately? Ever imagined how it would feel to launch your own rocket into the sky? Well, imagine no longer!
Walsh, a new community under construction on 7,200 acres of former ranch land near Fort Worth, Texas, will one day contain 15,000 homes.
The sweet aroma of cooked fruit filling your kitchen is one of the trademark scents of summer. Yet attaining the perfect consistency for homemade jam can be difficult to master. Often it ends up a watery mess or over-solidifies into thick mystery goo that is destined for the trash, not topping your toast.