News: Apple Brings 3D Scanning to macOS Monterey with Object Capture
As brands and content makers create more augmented reality experiences, the demand for tools to create 3D content grows in kind.
As brands and content makers create more augmented reality experiences, the demand for tools to create 3D content grows in kind.
We're still basking in the afterglow of the HUGE Snap Partner Summit last week, where Snap made Snapchat a much stronger augmented reality platform while also unveiling the AR smartglasses version of Spectacles. This week, we got a peek at how Spectacles AR started and got our hands on Lenses from Lego and Disney featured during the keynote.
When Snap CEO Evan Spiegel pulled off the surprise debut of the augmented reality version of Spectacles last week, it was one of the biggest moments in the company's history.
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 fight for augmented reality branding that we thought had been settled has suddenly turned into a full-fledged legal battle—again.
The experience of actually using the HoloLens 2 can be difficult to describe to anyone who hasn't had a chance to directly interact with the device in person and be blown away by its immersive capabilities.
Niantic first unveiled its AR cloud back in 2018, using it to enhance the immersive capabilities of its gaming portfolio.
The concept of Metaverse, otherwise referred to as AR cloud, where a digital twin of the real world filled with virtual content anchored persistently for all to see, has been a sci-fi dream of futurists for years and an aim for most tech companies who are serious about AR.
The development of virtual reality at Facebook has been evolving lightspeed in the last few years. But while a relatively small group of VR enthusiasts and gamers are enjoying the social media giant's dedication to immersive headsets, it is the augmented reality space and its potential scale that truly has the tech market enthralled.
The Metaverse, or AR cloud, has been a sci-fi dream for decades, but only recently have companies begun to actually develop the technology to build it. With its latest funding round, Epic Games is suddenly a front-runner in this pursuit.
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.
At its height, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many auto showrooms to close their doors. As the pandemic persists, many consumers are still hesitant to let their socially distanced guard down.
Microsoft believes its Mesh platform can help developers build immersive AR apps more easily. We spoke with a member of the Microsoft team to learn more about the platform.
The augmented reality industry has grown steadily over the past four years, but now it is on a collision course with uber-popular non-fungible tokens technology, with Looking Glass and music artist Reggie Watts among the latest to strike while the iron is hot.
In response to Apple's implementation of LiDAR sensors in iPad Pro and iPhone 12 Pro models, Google is looking to leverage the dual-camera setups in recent flagship devices as depth-sensing components.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for virtual and remote collaboration, and Microsoft has a solution that may serve as the catalyst for more such apps for augmented and virtual reality in the near future.
The average business person likely recognizes Epson for its printers or even its projectors, not the futuristic AR wearables.
The new WandaVision series is perhaps the hottest TV show on the Disney Plus streaming service since...well, its own The Mandalorian wrapped up its second season late last year.
The Lens Studio app has become a cornerstone of Snap and its augmented reality technology portfolio by giving developers, creatives, and novices the ability to create augmented reality camera effects for Snapchat.
San Francisco-based augmented reality company Scope AR has made building AR instructional content for mobile devices and AR wearables as easy as throwing together a PowerPoint deck, primarily via its WorkLink platform.
Bud Light being the official beer sponsor of the NFL just makes sense for American football. But what about the NHL, with hockey being the official winter sport of Canada by decree?
Modern life is almost completely digital ... almost. While you can get by in many cases with just your iPhone, sometimes a situation requires a hard copy. In the past, there was really no convenient way for you to get a Reminders list from your iPhone onto paper, but iOS 14.5 changes that.
Shortcuts are meant to make your life easier, and iPhone shortcuts are no exception. They can use different triggers, manual or automated, to perform actions in the background, allowing you to do things like send a prewritten text message during a bad date or change your wallpaper at certain times of the day. However, sometimes it's not only about the shortcut itself but about how fast you can run it.
As Apple, Google, Snap, and Facebook wrestle for positioning to lure developers and creators to build augmented reality experiences for their respective tools, Facebook is looking at a learning approach for its Spark AR platform.
I must admit, upon learning that the NFL was broadcasting the contest between the New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears on CBS, Amazon Prime Video, and Nickelodeon, the latter was the only option I wanted, purely for the novelty of the experience.
Roughly a year and a half after unveiling the HoloLens-like ThinkReality A6, Lenovo is back with its take on enterprise-grade smartglasses, and the results look impressive. Then again, looks can be deceiving.
The past year has revealed a gaping hole of opportunity in the world of business called virtual meetings. Some existing players like Zoom hopped on that opportunity, while others like Skype seemed stuck on the sidelines, and Google Meet just managed to catch up in time to snag some of the shift in remote work.
Compared to Apple's products like the iPhone and iPad, Android phones and tablets are very flexible devices. For instance, you can set a new home screen, replace the lock screen, or even beam files using NFC — but that's just the software side of things, and the flexibility goes well beyond that.
A lot of digital ink has been spilled heaping scorn on Magic Leap. Much of that media schadenfreude was due to what some believed were unmet promises versus some of the early hype around the product. Others just seemed to be rubbed the wrong way by the startup's Apple-esque secrecy and penchant for attempting to coin new terms and frameworks for things that were, mostly, already in play.
You won't have to ask Santa for holiday-themed augmented reality experiences, because practically any social and shopping app that offers AR effects has them available now.
If you're like me, you enjoy using your phone's dark theme at night and light theme during the day. When switching from dark to light and vice versa, many of the UI elements in supported apps adjust accordingly, but you have no control over what does and doesn't change. WhatsApp, on the other hand, does give you some granular control by letting you pick a chat wallpaper for each theme.
Apple's latest offerings, the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max all feature the A14 Bionic system on a chip, the fastest chipset ever seen on a smartphone, running 50% faster than any other CPUs. But despite the advanced technology, even the iPhone 12 is privy to internal issues, which is why you should know how to force restart it if it ever freezes.
As if telemarketers weren't bad enough, now we have robocalls and spoofed numbers to deal with. Many of us get a least one spam call per day, if not much more than that. Google's Phone app has always been great at managing these calls, but it's been exclusive to their Pixel phones — until recently, that is.
Android 11 has a new power menu with integrated contactless payment cards and smart home toggles. It's definitely futuristic — so much so that it pushed out a tool many of us use in the present: the screenshot button.
One of the underrated components of the Galaxy Note 20 series is its usage of Gorilla Glass Victus. Think of this as Gorilla Glass 7, the latest innovation from Corning. And this release is a big deal, delivering protection without sacrifices.
If you've been an iPhone user for quite some time, you probably have quite a bit of photos and videos in iCloud or on your device. Unless you know the date, location, or event, it can be pretty hard to find a specific memory. Even with intelligent search suggestions, AI-created categories, and multi-keyword filters, you still may not be able to find what you want. The new iOS 14 update changes that.
Out of all the myths about the iPhone's battery, one that's very true is that charging your phone overnight is bad news. Keeping the charge level at 100% puts the battery under strain, which can permanently damage it. Apple took steps to address the issue in iOS 13, where your battery stops charging when it hits 80% in some scenarios, but that's not always enough.
When you don't have a steady cellular signal or immediate Wi-Fi access but need to communicate with others around you, you can set up an off-the-grid voice communications network using a Raspberry Pi and an Android app.
5G is here. Well, not everywhere. All three wireless carriers have turned on their 5G networks, but only in select markets. Like 4G, each carrier is doing things a bit differently, which means your 5G experience will not be the same across the board.
A modern iPhone is capable of running sophisticated, exquisitely-rendered games that rival titles on current-generation consoles. However, there is some value in classic video game titles, whether you grew up playing games on the Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Sega Genesis or not.