At long last, the magical world of Harry Potter has received a mobile game worthy of its name. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is the game in question, and is set to touch down worldwide on June 21, 2019. For the longest time, however, the game has been available as a soft launched game for testing, and with a little tinkering, you can actually try it out right now before its official release stateside.
Developers in the augmented reality industry got a lot of love this week.
By far the most significant development for AR in the coming months and years — the development that will drive AR adoption — will be our reliance upon the AR cloud.
Among a crowded field of AR cloud companies aiming to power the future of augmented reality by creating a world of persistent holographic content that lives in a cloud, accessible across devices and accounts, Ubiquity6 is hoping it has found a way to differentiate its platform.
Augmented reality optics maker WaveOptics has just infused its operations with a fresh round of funding to facilitate its objective of bringing consumer-grade smartglasses at a $600 price point to market in 2019.
Sony Pictures has tapped the powers of augmented reality as provided by startup 8th Wall & the Amazon Sumerian development platform to help it promote the latest motion picture manifestation of Spider-Man.
On Wednesday, in addition to uploading another batch of videos from its L.E.A.P. conference to its YouTube channel, Magic Leap also launched a new video series for developers called Spacebar.
With would-be unicorns Magic Leap and Niantic among its investments, Google is an active investor in augmented reality technology. This week, the search giant experienced both ends of the investment cycle, with an exit via Lyft's acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, and a funding round for Resolution Games.
A major obstacle to the mainstream acceptance of smartglasses is the current inability able to smoosh processors, sensors, and batteries into a pair of frames that look cool. Wearables maker Thalmic is hinting that it may have figured it all out.
This week, Next Reality published profiles on the leaders in augmented reality hardware industry, with Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz topping the list. So, it should be no surprise that two app makers want to align themselves with Magic Leap's flagship product.
Automotive augmented reality company WayRay has set its destination for a $1 billion valuation with an estimated time of arrival of 2019, and it has just passed a major milestone towards that goal.
While most kids his age are busy playing Fortnite, 11-year-old Yumo Soerianto is developing augmented reality games. Kids like Soerianto are the future of the augmented reality field — they'll likely be coming into their own as professional developers right as AR technologies become lightweight and powerful enough to be contained in a pair of sunglasses.
The arrival of Magic Leap One is tantalizingly close and, although the company has been saving the last details for launch day, a few of the more important details were found this week hiding deep in the code on Magic Leap's website.
In 2018, notches are the hot trend with smartphones. Essential was first to release a phone with a notch in mid-2017, but Apple kicked off the fad in earnest with the iPhone X. Unfortunately, unlike the iPhone X, every Android phone with a notch has a noticeable bottom chin. Let's take a deep dive to find out why.
Augmented reality is really picking up steam as a tool for marketing departments to pitch their products.
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.
The availability of space for filming immersive content has just gotten bigger with the launch of Innovation Studios by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
As summer is upon us, new musical Snapchat lenses are as well. This week has entries from Maroon 5, Simon and Garfunkel, and Snow Tha Product with entertaining visuals to match. As kids start to leave school for the summer, expect the lens scene to be kicked up a notch with anticipation.
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.
Modern "mad men" are buying into augmented reality for marketing, with the two latest examples being trendy burger maker Bareburger and department store chain Zara.
Mobile gamers are well aware of this, but zombie shooters have become pretty stagnant and unimaginative in recent years. Too many entries in this genre feature the same cookie-cutter gameplay, but thankfully, Gameloft aims to change this. The company has soft-launched Dead Rivals in a few countries, and with a little work, you can try the game yourself right now.
As the week of the Game Developer's Conference hits the mid-point, we've already had some major announcements hit the AR space. The specific timing of these announcements are thanks in part to a conference within a conference called VRDC, aimed at VR, AR, and MR developers. And while the week is hardly over, the announcement that is still having a big effect on the developer population is the reveal of the Creator Portal for the long-awaited Magic Leap One device.
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.
A new smartglasses powerhouse is rising in Europe, led by two of the region's leading brands, optical systems company Zeiss (also known as Carl Zeiss) and telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom.
Prior to Apple's earnings report on Thursday, the storm clouds were gathering as Wall Street prepared for bad news in the wake of reports of slower iPhone sales. But it turns out that those fears were mostly unwarranted. Apple managed to increase iPhone revenue during the December quarter, despite selling slightly fewer phones.
In its goal to push the visual quality of real-time rendering to a new level, Unity is starting the new year off right by releasing a sneak peek at its upcoming interactive rendering improvements via a short, three-minute first-person interactive demo called "Book of the Dead."
Between Renault Truck's testing of the HoloLens in factories and BMW promoting its newest model through Snapchat, the auto industry is hot for augmented reality to improve internal operations and engage consumers.
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.
After exploiting a vulnerable target, scooping up a victim's credentials is a high priority for hackers, since most people reuse passwords. Those credentials can get hackers deeper into a network or other accounts, but digging through the system by hand to find them is difficult. A missed stored password could mean missing a big opportunity. But the process can largely be automated with LaZagne.
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.
It has been an interesting few days in developer news. The Microsoft blog has been busy with information relative to the augmented reality space. Meta 2 has also announced an interesting development this week. Here is a collection of various tidbits that have been collecting up.
How can a drug used to treat cancer be effective against viruses, too? The answer lies in the drug's shared target — specifically, cellular components that control the activity of genes. A new research study showed that one such type of drug, histone methyltransferase inhibitors used in cancer clinical trials, has activity against herpes simplex virus, too.
As more companies begin adopting augmented reality in the workplace, providers like Vuzix reap the benefits.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is launching the world's most powerful rocket. The Tesla founder and CEO says the company is about to go through "manufacturing hell" to make delivery schedules for its new Tesla 3. Somehow, Musk says Tesla will offer Level 5 driving (so you can take a nap while your car drives you to and from work) within two years.
Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk said during the Model 3 launch party Friday night that all Tesla cars in production have the same driverless hardware, signaling that Tesla's jump to Level 4 hinges on a software update — but Musk didn't exactly say that.
Augmented reality sells, but who's buying? Over the past week, two companies made executive hires to capitalize on the growth of augmented reality as a service to sell to other businesses. Meanwhile, two companies joined forces to offer augmented reality tools to headset makers and content providers.
Augmented and virtual reality continues to be a hot commodity among tech investors, with more than $800 million invested in AR/VR companies in the second quarter alone and global tech leaders like Samsung focusing their investment strategies on the emerging field.
Nvidia has emerged as the indisputable leader in chips for Level 3 and even more advanced driverless applications, catching some of the world's largest semiconductor makers and automotive suppliers by surprise.
At the end of June, Unity 2017.1, the newest version of the popular 3D development engine, went live. And with that release, it brought out some very cool new features like Timeline and Cinemachine, to name a few. Now, for those of us that develop with Unity and follow the beta program closely, these features are not new at all. What is more likely the case is that we have spent a good deal of time using these features for a few months and even possibly helped iron out a few bugs.
Sex makes the world go 'round, and when it does, so does gonorrhea. Finally some good news on the growing menace of drug-resistant gonorrhea — a large, long-term study shows a vaccine may work in reducing the incidence of an increasingly dangerous infection.
