Here at Next Reality, our typical approach to all things augmented reality involves vision combined with remote control, either via a handheld device, gaze control, or hand/finger tracking.
After building a tech empire on revenues from search advertising, Google is not about to sit back and let Snapchat, Facebook, 8th Wall, and others draw all the AR marketing attention to their platforms.
Don't look now, but stock photo mega-site Shutterstock may have the most extensive library of augmented reality content available.
If you've ever wanted to barge into Jerry Seinfeld's apartment like Cosmo Kramer, you can now do so without having to book a ride on the Peterman Reality Tour.
The city of London is getting a holiday gift this season, but it's not the kind you unwrap, since it's completely delivered in augmented reality.
Despite funding difficulties that forced Meta to place employees on temporary leave in September, the augmented reality headset maker is reminding enterprise companies that it remains a viable option for visualizing and working with 3D design models.
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.
The long and slow road toward the actual release of the Magic Leap One appears to be accelerating, with a couple of new demonstrations of how the system works revealed in this week's creator's portal updates along with the company's developer documentation.
While mobile gaming, in the 10 years since the App Store launched, has matured to console-level quality, premium augmented reality games built with ARKit (or ARCore) have been scarce.
It will likely take a few more years before smartglasses are ready for primetime as component makers achieve the innovations necessary for consumer-centric device designs. Nevertheless, two technology companies are making steps in that direction as Qualcomm is rumored to be working on a chip dedicated to AR & VR headsets, while DigiLens has reduced the size of its waveguide displays for motorcycle helmets.
Just days after Bose did its best to frame a pair of glasses frames with spatial audio as "augmented reality," a patent application from Magic Leap, surfaced on Thursday, March 15, offers a similar idea, but with real AR included.
In any business, there are a number of questions companies must answer in order to get customers to buy a product or service. The same holds true for companies selling augmented reality headsets.
It would be difficult to discuss the business of augmented reality without acknowledging the annual tech meat market of CES.
Just as the modern travel experience has improved thanks to the internet, Airbnb wants to make your stay in a stranger's home easier by way of augmented and virtual reality.
Immersive advertising company Vertebrae has extended its native ad platform to augmented reality via mobile Chrome browsers for Android and Safari for iPhone.
With mobile developers near and far primed to implement augmented reality into their iOS apps with Apple's ARKit, uSens offers them a new tool for markerless location tracking.
Augmented reality is quickly becoming a popular tool for marketing use cases, as demonstrated by new projects serving the automotive, entertainment, and tourism industries this past week.
Virtual, mixed, and augmented reality all provide different but compellingly immersive experiences that draw us in through sight and sound. But what about our other senses? A few strange inventions are already exploring the possibilities.
Most virtual and mixed reality headsets offer unnatural controls, making you use awkward movements or physical devices to control the holographic elements in your direct view. This doesn't make a lot of sense because using your hands is more natural, so Manus developed a set of gloves that solves that problem entirely.
The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in an unprecedented time in modern history where terms like "social distancing" and "self-quarantine" have pushed their way into the zeitgeist.
Just days ago, Georgio Armani canceled his live show in Milan and opted to stream it instead due to coronavirus concerns. Now, at the start of Paris Fashion Week — shadowed by similar worries — Burberry has launched an augmented reality tool that lets you view the latest high fashion from the comfort of your home.
The newly enhanced focus from Magic Leap on enterprise, announced on Tuesday, also came with a few companies opting to weigh in with their experiences developing for the platform.
Smartglasses from Apple have become the holy grail of augmented reality, and 2020 has been the rumored time horizon for the product's arrival for the past two years. The latest analyst report sheds more light on its potential debut next year.
The long tease that is the release of Minecraft Earth continues, this time with an opportunity to start playing what might be one of the hottest augmented reality games ever, before the general public.
This week, the recurring theme in augmented reality can be summed up fairly succinctly: content is king.
Because timing is everything, the latest entry in the location-based augmented reality gaming sweepstakes, Ghostbusters World, has arrived just in time for Halloween.
Among a treasure trove of new developer information on the Lumin OS that Magic Leap recently published on its Creator Portal appears to be the official confirmation of the Magic Leap Mobile Companion App.
Augmented reality is expected to eventually change everything, and the prevailing view is that those changes will be for the better. The converse view, however, is that the technology will further erode privacy.
Apple's iPhone X now has the power to turn anyone into a Japanese anime character, thanks to a new app that harnesses the device's TrueDepth camera.
To commemorate the rollout of the AR+ update for Pokémon Go, Apple CEO Tim Cook took to Twitter to promote and celebrate the moment his company's ARKit platform made possible.
Earlier this year at WWDC, Apple made a big show of featuring augmented reality as a central part of iOS moving forward. But since then, other than comments from the company's CEO, Tim Cook, we haven't seen much direct promotion of augmented reality from the company. Until now.
As demand for AR and VR developers continues to increase, particularly with the advent of Apple's ARKit platform, Unity has partnered with online learning company Udacity to help developers sharpen their skills for these jobs.
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.
This is one of the coolest applications of Apple's ARKit that we've seen so far. The 3D software product studio gradientspace has created a Minecraft 3D scanner using ARKit.
Over the past week, companies took a variety of approaches to investing in augmented reality. Lampix is backing its own effort to build an ecosystem for augmented reality platforms. Nokia and Xiaomi are teaming up on numerous fronts, potentially including augmented reality.
This week's Brief Reality is led by a pair of stories with an eye to the future of the augmented reality industry, first in terms of standards for the industry, then with regards to its future applications in the automotive realm. Finally, one company looks to boost its future sales with an executive hire.
Every Friday, Next Reality reviews the latest headlines from the financial side of augmented and mixed reality. This Market Reality column covers funding announcements, mergers and acquisitions, market analysis, and the like. This week's column is led by two companies cashing in on visual inputs.
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.
Google and Samsung have been leaving Apple in the dust when it comes to virtual reality gear. However, as the market grows and becomes more impossible to ignore within the tech world, Apple may be forced to play catch up. This could account for the new Apple patent that was granted today.
When it published its 2016-2017 catalog last year, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) became the first college to leverage augmented reality technology for a college catalog.
