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.
Before The New York Times brought augmented reality to its iPhone app, the only way Winter Olympics fans could get this close a view to the world's best athletes would be to acquire a press pass.
While it may seem to some like investors are just throwing their money at augmented reality companies simply because the tech is heavily hyped, these money managers do actually want to see a return on their investments.
While 2017 saw the rise of "bezel-less" smartphones, none truly lived up to the name. Samsung shrank its bezels significantly, while Apple went with the infamous "notch." However, Samsung seems on the verge of kicking bezels out the door with a new patent application that embeds the front camera into the display.
Google, Facebook, and Huawei have made an investment in nurturing the future of augmented and virtual reality through $6 million in contributions to the opening of a new center at the University of Washington.
Augmented reality was recently named the "Mobile Disruptor of the Year" for 2017 by Mobile Marketer, but the technology is showing no signs of slowing down as we head into 2018. In fact, the technology appears to be gaining momentum.
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.
Anyone who knows me well is aware that I am a cyberpunk junkie. The conflict between lowlifes, corporations, and the government, flavored with dystopian future, high technology, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and noir storytelling, just does something for me.
Every year, football fans get excited about the next crop of blue chip prospects joining their teams, from five-star high school recruits graduating to college to first-round rookies drafted into the NFL.
Developers in the augmented reality space are sitting on the bleeding edge of a hot technology. With the intense interest, especially in the tech circles, there are a large number of people working on potential solutions and uses for the technology. There is also a lot of time, money and effort being put in the tools and infrastructure for the technology. For better of for worse this also means constant changes.
Ride-sharing firm Lyft says it will continue to rely on drivers in the near and long term even as it replaces them with driverless cars, Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft's director of product, said during a Podcast with Recode.
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.
China's Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google, live streamed a video yesterday of CEO Robin Li riding a self-drive vehicle along the streets and highways of Beijing.
Imagine walking up to enter a live event — but instead of pulling out a physical or mobile ticket to get admitted — you pull out your smartphone which lets out an ultrasonic sound tailored for you that lets you into the event.
Today it was revealed that Avis Budget Group will now support and maintain Waymo's driverless car fleet in Phoenix, the company's first public trial of self-driving cars. This is an unprecedented partnership in the autonomous vehicle field and conveys the steps driverless companies are taking to make their vehicles more accessible to the public.
A new dating app has arrived, and it'll finally land you a date with your celebrity crush ... kind of. The app — Dating AI — uses face search technology to help you search for potential love interests that resemble a celebrity you're attracted to.
Walsh, a new community under construction on 7,200 acres of former ranch land near Fort Worth, Texas, will one day contain 15,000 homes.
While restaurants and classrooms have enacted policies banning cell phones, one father has had enough of his kids' obsessive phone habits. Dr. Tim Farnum is now seeking to ban the sale of smartphones to children under 13.
With so many companies announcing news or demonstrating technologies at the Augmented World Expo 2017, it can be a challenge to see it all. In fact, we are still unpacking some of our in-depth on-site coverage. So, this edition of Brief Reality is focused on the news we did not cover last week.
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.
Devastating and deadly, land mines are a persistent threat in many areas of the world. Funding to clear regions of land mines has been decreasing, but new research may offer a less dangerous method of locating hidden, underground explosives by using glowing bacteria.
Rumors that Apple is honing its automated car technology have skyrocketed. Thanks, now, in no small part to some enterprising members of the media who leaked the names of Apple's self-driving car team to the public.
The Disney Research Lab is using projector-based illumination to paint actors' faces during live performances. You know what that means? Disney just took Halloween to a whole new level.
General Motors Co. (GM) is set to expand their fleet of driverless cars in San Francisco, Detroit, and Scottsdale, according to documents filed by the company.
The Gorillaz have launched a new app in promotion for their new album Humanz that allows you to "[s]tep inside the hallowed halls of the Gorillaz house" through the power of augmented reality.
NextReality will be giving readers a rundown of the augmented and mixed reality news briefs from the preceding week that we didn't cover already. This way, you'll never miss anything of importance in the NextReality landscape, and will always know what's going on with new augmented and mixed reality tech and applications. The first one starts right now, and you can enjoy future ones every Tuesday going forward, so stay tuned.
Upskill, an enterprise software developer for industrial augmented reality applications, recently received an influx of funding and a major vote of confidence from two of their top customers.
Coming up at the end of May is the world's largest conference and expo dedicated to all things augmented and virtual reality, the Augmented World Expo, more commonly known just as AWE. And this year, a few of us from NextReality are going to be there.
Lightform might just be the thing to have at your next party. The San Francisco-based company just created the first computer ever able to connect to a projector and instantly scan 3D scenes to mix reality with projected light.
Nokia, the Finnish telecommunications company, is about to shake things up a bit after its networks sales in the final quarter of last year declined 14% compared to sales in 2015.
Trimble is integrating its mixed reality applications into the DAQRI Smart Helmet to enable outdoor and on-site support for design, construction, and heavy industry as part of a collaboration the companies announced today.
Disengagement report numbers for self-driving car testing in 2016 on public roads in California were just released, and the biggest point we can make about them is that Waymo is very far ahead of their competitors in almost every metric.
DigiLens, a company specializing in optical waveguide technology, recently announced that they had closed a $22 million round of strategic investment, also known as Series B funding. This round brought in Sony, Foxconn, Continental, and Panasonic, as well as more traditional venture investors such as Alsop Louie Partners, Bold Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, and Dolby Family Ventures.
Last week it was announced that Waymo, the former Google Self-Driving Car project, had graduated from Alphabet's X innovation center. This graduation had been in the cards for many months with senior members of the project team and X hinting that it would be soon.
When the "Just another day in the office at Magic Leap" video was released last year, it was called a mind-blowing, stunning, and breathtaking take on mixed reality gaming. It was a great presentation of what the technology could be, but not for a second did I think it was anything other than a concept video, and I'm not the only one who thought that. This was a goal to reach for mixed reality, not the reality.
Our brains do a magnificent amount of work to process visual stimuli, but they aren't difficult to fool. Optical illusions can trick our minds into believing what we're seeing is real, even if it's not—and virtual and mixed reality technologies take advantage of this little loophole in our brain to help us accept the unreal.
Not content with bringing the first untethered mixed reality headset to market, Microsoft wants to expand their Windows Holographic operating system beyond HoloLens into vastly more robust technologies.
I honestly believe that everyone on earth owns the same blue cooler—you know the one. Cooler technology hasn't changed since the '50s, and frankly, it's time to mix things up, with a built-in blender perhaps? With the Coolest Cooler, it's actually possible!
Last year, Todd Blatt ran a Kickstarter campaign to make 3D-printed accessories for Google Glass, and has turned it into a company: GlassKap.
Say hello to the Sony Xperia T3, a light and slim Android smartphone—in fact, it's the thinnest 5.3" smartphone on the market.
