Next Reality

When Vivo revealed its new mixed reality headset — simply named Vivo Vision — it didn't just debut a new device. It kicked open the door to a market that, until now, has been heavily dominated by two tech giants: Apple and Meta. The Vision clearly draws inspiration from Apple's Vision Pro (very clear, in fact) — right down to its sleek ski-goggle silhouette and gesture-based interface — but it's more than just a copycat play.As someone who has followed the evolution of AR and VR for years, I...

Meta is doubling down on augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) with the launch of Aria Gen 2. Unlike consumer-focused models such as the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, Aria Gen 2 is designed for AI research, robotics, and machine perception. The glasses offer a glimpse into the future of AR-powered assistance.

Facebook promised that it would release a pair of smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban sometime this year and now it looks like we have our first look at the device.

Just hours after an early leak via Twitter, Facebook and Ray-Ban have officially released their new wearable collaboration.

One of the best recent outings in the Marvel universe is the animated series What If...?, which explores alternate universe takes on various superhero storylines that deliver fascinating scenarios if one single factor had been different in the story.

As we move toward the end of the year, the wheels of the augmented reality space continue to shift in major ways.

The emergence of Facebook's collaboration with Ray-Ban to launch Stories smart glasses has finally put an exclamation point on a new category of smart glasses: the pre-augmented reality wearable segment.

On Monday, the social media giant Facebook suffered a massive outage that, as of this writing, is still in effect.

Virtual reality (VR) is no longer just for gaming — it's becoming a powerful tool in sports science to evaluate athlete performance. A new study by a group of scientists in Germany has validated a VR-based test battery that can reliably measure key athletic skills, such as reaction time, jumping ability, and complex movement execution.

As conversations about artificial intelligence (AI) grow, a new concept — augmented intelligence — is taking shape as a more human-focused way of using technology. While AI often evokes visions of automation and machine-driven decision-making, augmented intelligence focuses on collaboration, where machines enhance rather than replace human capabilities.

Today is the 10-year anniversary of the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. To commemorate the occasion, Apple has posted a message and a mini-documentary on its website.

Although the enterprise use cases for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 continue to impress, the arts community just can't stay away from the best augmented reality headset on the market.

If you're a normal, non-corporate video conferencing user, you may not have heard of BlueJeans, but in the corporate world, the software has long been a major staple when it comes to remote meetings.

As NASA nears the launch of another mission to the Moon in 2024, and a subsequent mission to Mars in the 2030s, augmented reality is increasingly being woven into the normal space operations to test various capabilities.

If the importance of augmented reality and VR hardware to Facebook's future wasn't already clear enough, a shake-up in the executive ranks at the company has made it as clear as smartglasses lenses.

It's always fun to get an unexpected glimpse of the future, especially when that peek is so close you can actually feel the excitement of the new emerging dynamic.

This was a busy week in the tech space. After everyone got over the major announcements of Apple's latest, we examined the metaverse through the lens of Hollywood, and then took a closer look at Facebook's first smartglasses.

It's about that time again: Facebook has announced the dates for its annual Facebook Connect (formerly known as Oculus Connect until last year).

As if answering Apple's major iPhone event on Tuesday, Chinese mobile giant Xiaomi held its own product launch event the following day.

The much-hyped Apple event is now history, and we finally know what the Cupertino tech giant had up its sleeve: new iPhones.

When it comes to the ever-shifting sands of the augmented reality space, you never know which week will end up being truly historic. Well, this one was one for the history books.

The fight to wrest control of apps from Apple's revenue-focused grip just took a major turn in favor of Epic Games.

We always know roughly when Apple events are coming, but when their new product events pop up, they're always a pleasant tech refresher from the Cupertino tech giant.

Amid a troubling resurgence in coronavirus cases, led by the new Delta variant, augmented reality is once again moving back into the spotlight as a solution, especially now that the move to return to offices has been stalled.

The augmented reality passthrough abilities of Facebook's Oculus Quest were only fully opened to independent developers recently.

In our review of Amazon's non-augmented reality Echo Frames smartglasses, we made the case for audio virtual assistants being the linchpin for AR wearables.

One of the primary assumptions in the world of VR and augmented reality is that the user has the ability to "see" virtual objects and the real world structures around them. But what if the user doesn't have perfect eyesight, or any eyesight at all?

While the rest of Big Tech is still moving relatively slowly on augmented reality smartglasses, Snap continues to supercharge its own experimental AR wearable called Spectacles.

The beauty industry has increasingly relied on the powers of augmented reality to drive sales in recent years, and now that virtual "everything" is on trend due to the pandemic, yet another big player is entering the fray.

The practice of using sound to trigger augmented reality interactions hasn't been widely used, but a new experience is so impressive that it could kick off more use of the dynamic.

What if, back in 2013, Google Glass had launched not as a Star Trek Borg-like eyepiece, but as a pair of seemingly normal shades, with the augmented reality lens and camera hidden within the frame?

The march to the mainstreaming of augmented reality can sometimes seem slow, but this week things picked up in earnest.

The US Department of Treasury isn't generally known for being on the very edge of technology innovations (see the current hubbub around crypto), instead usually waiting until certain tools have been battle-tested in the mainstream or enterprise sector.

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.

On this platform, we talk a lot about the future of augmented reality, and we pay attention to what is being said elsewhere as well.

Part of the mainstreaming of augmented reality is learning to adopt new habits around the hardware delivering these groundbreaking next-gen interface experiences.