Following the surprise release of Magic Leap's SDK on Monday, March 19, Unity, Unreal Engine, and Mozilla followed up by announcing official partnerships with the company.
The narratives around virtual reality consistently revolve around human empathy and emotion, while the story around augmented reality has been decidedly more dispassionate and business-focused — until now.
Last week, augmented reality startup Proxy42 released Father.IO, a multiplayer game that turns any indoor or outdoor space into a laser tag arena.
For those who thought the action in Pokémon Go was a bit too pedestrian, Father.io wants to recruit you for a multi-player, first-person shooter that unfolds on the streets of your own city.
Considered by many (perhaps unfairly) to be a very public failure, Google Glass can add another plot point to its comeback story, this time as a tool to teach social skills to children and adults with autism.
Augmented reality headsets with larger eye boxes than any device currently available could make their way to market by the end of next year if current timelines hold true.
Back to the Future Part II missed wildly on many technological advances for the year 2015, such as flying cars and rehydration ovens. However, it connected on several predictions, such as video calling and biometric security, and it was in the ballpark (pun intended) on others, such as the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.
Outside of early military applications, augmented reality is a relatively new technology. It stands to reason that the next company to make a splash in AR would be a startup, and Techstars wants to help.
Generally speaking, in terms of modern devices, the more simple you make an interface to navigate, the more successful the product is.
The staff at Next Reality News is legitimately excited about the prospects that Google's ARCore could bring not only to smartphones and tablets running Android, but also to Android-based hardware such as smartglasses.
A survey by ABI Research revealed that only 25 percent of businesses have implemented augmented reality technology in some form or fashion.
This week, two companies looking to capitalize on the growing augmented reality industry, raised funding from starkly different sources.
An update to the iFramed social media gateway app for iOS adds an augmented reality feature called JuxImage that gives its users Snapchat-like photo and video effects.
Mobile augmented reality developer Blippar has updated its mobile app for iOS and Android with an augmented reality face profiles feature based on the company's real-time facial recognition engine.
Perhaps in tribute to the season premiere of Game of Thrones, Google Glass is demonstrating that what is dead may never die, as Alphabet's X (formerly Googlex) has revealed that the Enterprise Edition of the smart glasses are now available to businesses.
When it comes to differentiating from the competition, brands are continuing to leverage augmented reality to give consumers to the point that there are few "firsts" left to achieve in the marketplace. While L'Oreal jumps on the augmented reality bandwagon for cosmetics, Acura finds a new way to make augmented reality a spectacle in the automotive industry.
Magic Leap has always been intensely secretive about its work on its augmented reality headset, so it's interesting that they're now publicly recruiting developers to build software for the device before its launch.
In honor of Earth Day tomorrow (woo!), visual artist Justin Brice Guariglia has released a new augmented reality app that lets you experience climate change from wherever you're standing.
Listen up ladies, there's no need to go to Sephora and model a hundred different shades of lipstick anymore. Now with Virtual Artist, Sephora's award-winning app, for iOS and Android, you can virtually test thousands of shades of single and palette eyeshadows, lip colors, and even false eyelash styles from their new augmented reality-based feature.
Throughout the summer and fall of 2016, in the sudden whirlwind that was Pokémon GO, it was hard to go anywhere in public without seeing someone attempting to catch Pokémon. Now, thanks to an upcoming platform called Motive.io, from the Vancouver company of the same name, location-driven application development will soon be accessible to everyone.
Last week, a new Kickstarter campaign arrived for a completely untethered, augmented reality headset for under $300 called Okularion. While at first glance, this unit looks very much like a Samsung Gear VR, one thing that sets it apart (aside from being untethered from a nearby computer) is that it does not require a smartphone. Well, that and it's an augmented reality headset as well.
Many midrange phones are being manufactured without a gyroscope sensor—the Moto X Play, third-generation Moto G, and several of Samsung's Galaxy Grand models, among others. It's not exactly an essential smartphone sensor, and leaving this out keeps the phone's price point down, so it's an understandable omission.
Augmented and mixed reality experiences attempt to break us out of windowed computing experiences and allow us to place software anywhere in the room. But that software doesn't have to take a rectangular form—theoretically, the web doesn't have to restrict itself to a page in a browser any longer. Does this mark the end of the web browser entirely? Probably not. A lot of information works well on the page, and the Microsoft HoloLens still uses a pretty standard version of their own Edge brows...
Disneyland may be the happiest place on Earth, but there are definitely a few flaws that only small kids could overlook. The lines are extravagantly long, everything is overpriced, and there are tons of grumpy people and crazy children running around as if they just found out there's a two-for-one special on ponies.
In our review of Amazon's non-augmented reality Echo Frames smartglasses, we made the case for audio virtual assistants being the linchpin for AR wearables.
Facebook's earnings calls are generally focused on numbers—revenue and user growth. But this week the company's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, carved out a significant portion of the call to elaborate on Facebook's plans for immersive computing.
The Lens Studio community, now made up of more than 200,000 creators, has generated some impressive augmented reality effects in the last few years. Amazingly, the groundbreaking Lenses for Snapchat continue to come, often from the internal AR team at Snap.
Facebook Reality Labs chief Andrew "Boz" Bosworth does a lot of hinting and teasing of what's coming next at Oculus, often with only a vague timeline on the horizon.
The Fourth of July, the celebration of US independence, as well as the second paid holiday of the summer, has arrived.
Ever since Facebook announced its partnership with Luxxotica brand Ray-Ban to produce smartglasses, the augmented reality space has been on high alert awaiting more details.
Facebook Reality Labs just experienced its first major executive exit since the pandemic began. Hugo Barra has announced that he's stepping down from his position as vice president of VR at Facebook.
One of the oldest electronic musical instruments is the theremin, a synthesizer that generates sound based on hand gestures, as featured in the classic "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys.
Having found success in video games and a hugely popular Netflix series, The Witcher franchise is now on the hunt for the coin Pokémon GO has earned in location-based augented reality mobile games.
As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, so, too, does the demand for video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.
For better or for worse, Google started the race towards smartglasses for everyday use with Google Glass before scrapping the Explorer Edition and pivoting towards enterprise customers.
With NFTs taking the art world by storm, it's a bit refreshing to know that you can enjoy world famous masterpieces in the comfort of your own home via augmented reality without emptying your cryptocurrency wallet.
The Apple rumor drumbeat is getting louder: a wearable augmented reality device is almost certainly coming, very soon.
Mobile augmented reality gaming pioneer Niantic is chomping at the bit to get games like Pokémon GO out of smartphones and onto smartglasses, and it appears to be taking matters into its own hands.
The face tracking of cats and dogs are probably my favorite AR innovations that have come to Snapchat Lenses over the past few years.
The moment many of the crypto savvy insiders in augmented reality and VR have been waiting for is here: we're finally getting our first big auction of NFT art that exists purely as a hologram.
