Market Reality: Outlook for Augmented & Mixed Reality Remains Favorable
With many of the companies working in augmented and mixed reality focused on the Augmented World Expo, the finance side of the industry has been relatively quiet.
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News: Wikitude & Lenovo Converge for Augmented Reality Cloud Platform
Lenovo has partnered with Wikitude to develop a cloud-based platform for delivering industrial-focused augmented reality content, the companies announced at the Augmented World Expo today in Santa Clara, California.
News: PTC Offers Free Trial of ThingWorx Platform
For companies wary of the temperature, PTC just made it easier for them to dip their toes in the waters of augmented reality.
News: Edgybees Extend Drone Prix AR Game to Epson Moverio Smartglasses
Earlier this month, Edgybees was the first game developer out of the gate with an augmented reality racing game for DJI drones called Drone Prix AR. Now, as the month closes, they are crossing the finish line with the first gaming app for Epson Moverio BT-300 Drone Edition smartglasses.
News: The Mummy Unwraps Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt
Universal Studios and Cinemark Theaters have enlisted mobile augmented reality game Seek to promote The Mummy, a reboot of the action-adventure film franchise starring summer movie mainstay Tom Cruise.
News: Guess Who's Back? Sherif Marakby Returns to Ford After Uber Stint
Sherif Marakby has returned to Ford as the VP of AVs & Electrification after a brief stint with Uber. Marakby's VP title will be effective June 12.
AWE Giveaway: We Promised Free Passes to the Augmented World Expo & Here They Are
The Augmented World Expo or AWE — if you are a big fan of AR/MR technology, that is a very fitting acronym — is the world's largest conferences dedicated to all things augmented, mixed and virtual reality. AWE is in its 8th year, and with the massive growth we have seen in the space over the last year, promises to be its biggest year yet.
News: Microsoft Demonstrates Holograms with Phase-Only Displays
Microsoft Research has published a technical paper reviewing their work with near-eye displays for virtual and augmented reality to project phase-only holograms.
News: So Long, Bird Poop! Waymo's Plans for Dirty LiDARs Revealed
Waymo has done a lot of things over the course of their driverless journey, but their solution to little birdies pooping all over a self-driving car's LiDAR system is definitely our favorite.
News: Check Out Volvo's Vision for a Driverless Garbage Truck Future
Volvo is joining the autonomous vehicle race. In a video released Tuesday, the company showed off its concept for a driverless garbage truck, adding themselves to a growing list of manufacturers pledging to work in the self-driving field.
News: Tango's Reach Is Being Limited by New Zenfone Exclusive to Verizon
Verizon will be exclusively selling the ASUS ZenFone AR, which supports Tango (Google's mobile AR platform) and Daydream VR.
News: Unity & Microsoft Are Giving Away $150,000 for HoloLens Apps & Loaning Out HoloLens Developers Kits
At the Microsoft Build 2017 conference in Seattle this past week, 3D application and game platform Unity, partnering with Microsoft, launched a contest that drives HoloLens developers to realize their ideas into a full-fledged application and possibly win money for it.
News: Amusement Park Pits Guests Against Each Other in Augmented Reality Warfare
Kings Dominion, an amusement park located in Doswell, Virginia, just announced a mobile augmented reality game for park visitors. Gameplay in The Battle for Kings Dominion — available on May 19 for iOS and Android devices — follows the playbook designed by Niantic through Ingress and Pokémon GO.
News: Google Unveils Visual Positioning Service for Tango
At the Google I/O keynote presentation today, Clay Bavor, Vice President of Virtual Reality for Google, shared a number of new initiatives in virtual and augmented reality. This included new services for the Tango platform called visual positioning service, or VPS.
News: Self-Driving Cars Are Coming to New York, but Only for a Limited Time
The east coast is becoming a hotbed for driverless. Sure, the west coast has all of its fancy tech companies testing self-driving cars, but we've got the goods too. Uber has brought the technology to Pennsylvania and will soon do the same in Toronto. (Stratford, Ontario, has plans to test out driverless too!) And today we got some great news: Governor Andrew Cuomo just approved of driverless testing in New York.
News: Microsoft Wants to Make HoloLens the Future of Education
In a video released Tuesday, Microsoft arguably began to position the HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality as the future of education. A smart tactic meant to coincide with their other education-related announcements made on the same day.
News: Say Goodbye to Texting & Driving, Thanks to This New App from Samsung
We all know we shouldn't be using our smartphones while driving. But we also know many people do it anyway. Soon, however, the addicts among us may not have a choice but to kick their habit. A new app announced today by Samsung will block all calls and texts while you drive, stopping those who text and drive right in their tracks.
News: Thyssenkrupp Claims Up to 4x Faster Workflow with HoloLens
Microsoft announced yet another exciting partnership for HoloLens today — thyssenkrupp, an industrial engineering company best known for their elevators — continuing to prove how useful augmented reality is in the workplace.
News: New App Lets Your Trace Drawings from Your Phone onto Paper
Get ready to draw like Leonardo da Vinci, or, at least, trace like him. A new augmented reality app, SketchAR, is the first mobile app that uses AR to allow users trace an image on real paper. The Lithuania-based company describes their product as "an application through which the user sees a virtual image on the surface of which they are planning to trace a sketch."
News: Increasing Road Deaths Due to Smartphone Use Make the Case for Driverless Vehicles
You would think most people would agree that you shouldn't use your smartphone while driving. Apparently, most people would be liars, according to recent data from the National Safety Council (NSC) and Zendrive.
News: Welding Simulator Uses Augmented Reality to Teach Students Safely
With products and solutions offered by the likes of Scope AR, Trimble, DAQRI, VIATechnik, and others, augmented reality is becoming a hot commodity for improving productivity while maintaining safety in the construction and manufacturing industries.
News: Sony Develops New HDR Camera Sensors for Self-Driving Cars
In the driverless race, technological advances can sometimes just add more tension to an already heated competition, if Waymo suing Uber over their allegedly stolen LiDAR technology is any indication. Now, Sony is offering a new camera sensor, one that should help self-driving cars "see" the road with much more accuracy than any other camera sensors available for vehicles currently.
News: Head of FedEx Freight Wants Laws to Make Truck Drivers More Like Pilots
We've heard a lot about self-driving taxis, as car and ride-sharing companies compete to win the driverless gold rush. But FedEx wants to bring its enterprise into the mix, as the head of its freight division has asked the US government to develop laws for self-driving trucks.
News: Magic Leap Has Been Making Big Deals Ahead of Highly Anticipated Launch
Magic Leap is no stranger to hype and speculative advancement—when their name pops up in the news, all focus turns to them. And the company is making news again this week, with the knowledge of an acquisition of a startup founded by former Apple employees, and by hiring animators from an Emmy and Oscar award-winning studio.
News: UK Government Invests $38 Million in Driverless Cars
With the British exit from the European Union looming, the UK is looking to the auto industry to help boost their economy and secure jobs through the upcoming years. Today, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Transport Minister John Hayes announced the government investment of $136.7 million (£109.7 million) across 38 different automobile projects, as a part of the Plan for Britain.
News: Classic '90s Game Lemmings Comes to the HoloLens
If there's one thing entertainment companies love, it's rebooting aging franchises. But design firm Globacore Interactive Technologies appears to have taken rebooting to the next level by remaking the classic '90s game Lemmings specifically to work on the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality headset.
News: John Hanke, CEO of Pokémon GO Maker, Says AR, Not VR, Should Be the Way of the Future
It isn't too hard to see John Hanke's bias towards augmented reality. His company, Niantic, created the astronomically profitable game Pokémon GO, which revolves around AR technology. However, Hanke has a case against virtual reality—he believes it just won't be healthy, in more than one sense of the word.
News: Popular App Shazam Trying to Cash in on the Trendiness of AR with Hiring of New CTO
While it remains unknown how exactly augmented reality will make its way into the mainstream (the Microsoft HoloLens sitting at $3,000 isn't exactly accessible), many brands have been trying to integrate the tech into their mobile apps, mimicking the success of Snapchat and its popular AR filters. One of those brands going all in on augmented reality is Shazam.
News: Jeep's New AR Experience Lets You Interact with a Car That Isn't Actually There
Jeep has now jumped on the AR-retail trend with their introduction of the Jeep Compass Visualizer. Customers can now view and customize a Jeep Compass to their liking, all without a real Jeep even present.
News: Ford Announces Plan for $337.9 Million Autonomous Car R&D Center in Canada
The race for the future of the automative world has never been tighter, with reports earlier this week that Tesla is now almost as valuable as Ford. The neck-in-neck companies are focused on the same next big step for automobiles: the driverless car.
News: VRLA Expo Prepares to Host Mixed Reality Easter Egg Hunt
The Easter Bunny is about to get his first experience with mixed reality. Virtual Reality Los Angeles (VRLA) will host its third annual expo in April, and this year's attendees will get to experience a fun Easter egg hunt sponsored by AfterNow and VRLA, in partnership with mixed reality king, the Microsoft HoloLens.
News: Measles 'Elimination' Far Off as Outbreak in Europe Progresses
Experts from the World Health Organization just expressed concern for the rising number of measles outbreaks across Europe. Despite a perfectly capable existing vaccine, "immunization coverage has dropped below the necessary threshold of 95%," causing the measles to spread throughout the European region.
News: ASUS Rumored to Turn AR & VR Departments into Independent Startup
ASUS is gearing up to move its augmented and virtual reality departments into an independent startup named Glamorfy, according to a recent report from tech news site Fudzilla.
News: Otto Cofounder Claims Autonomous Trucks Will Be Taking Over Highways Within 10 Years
Any truck driver who breathed a sigh of relief when US Secretary of Commerce Steve Mnuchin recently stated that driverless cars "will not affect jobs in a meaningful way for roughly 50 to 100 years" can go back to being anxious about job security again.
News: Bob Iger Says AR, Not VR, Is the Way of the Future for Disney Parks
Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger has out and out rejected Virtual Reality (VR) as a component of any Disney Theme park. While Knott's Berry Farm, why-hasn't-this-chain-shut-down-yet Sea World (seriously, RIP Tillikum), and Six Flags have all invested in VR to help spice up their parks in this theme park depression period, Iger has "ordered his team not to even think about it." Iger instead is very much onboard the Augmented Reality (AR) train.
News: Lowe's New Tango-Based App Helps Shoppers Find Products They Need
Lowe's Home Improvement laid another brick in their augmented reality foundation with today's announcement of a new app for Tango-enabled smartphones.
News: New Training Simulation Concept Enables Safe Crane Operation Through HoloLens
A proof of concept for an overhead crane training simulator is in the works. Using Microsoft HoloLens and an industrial-style controller, trainees can pick up holographic loads and transport them throughout a warehouse setting.
News: Archer AR App Deputizes Viewers as Detectives
The producers of FX's animated series Archer have devised a plan to introduce augmented reality hijinks into its eighth and penultimate season with a new app for iOS and Android devices.
News: Adobe Integrates with HoloLens for Personalized Marketing
At Adobe Summit 2017 this week, Adobe announced they are looking to occupy a new space in the market by combining their analytic capabilities with augmented reality. Teaming up with Microsoft, the company has combined Adobe Sensei software with the HoloLens, reports GeekWire. Together, the tech and software create a new tool for retailers to track their consumers' habits.
News: GM Is Pushing Anticompetitive Legislation to Slow Uber & Waymo
Lately, the biggest news in driverless has been the raging lawsuit between two autonomous spearheads, Uber and Google's Waymo. A new bill back by General Motors, however, could take them both out of the race towards driverless.