Next Reality

Dev Report: Machine Learning Agents Come to Unity

As we have seen previously with the likes of SethBling's Mar I/O videos and other examples, video games seem to be a great source for training AI neural networks. Augmented reality and machine learning are part of a collection of technologies that seem to be growing toward a point of maturity, and that will likely cause them to be intertwined for the foreseeable future. As developers, machine learning will definitely change the way we create software in the coming future. Instead of going lin...

Market Reality: Mira Closes Funding Round as Cappasity Prepares Blockchain Crowdsale

If competition in the augmented reality space was a spectator sport, then ARKit, ARCore, and HoloLens dominate the prime-time broadcasts on ESPN.

Apple AR: Color BlastAR Rides the Rainbow from Tango to ARKit

Mobile game companies Hit Point Studios and Legacy Games have adapted their Color BlastAR augmented reality game for iOS with the ARKit platform.

Apple AR: Avoid Hills on Your Next Run or Ride via ARKit with Fitness AR

As a long-distance runner off and on for the past, I absolutely detests hills. While there are many apps that can measure elevation and slope for certain routes, understanding spatial data on a line graph or even an elevation map can be difficult.

Apple AR: Houzz ARKit App Beats IKEA to the App Store

With the official release of iOS 11, the availability of an app that uses the much-hyped ARKit platform to place virtual furniture in one's home was expected.

Apple AR: Kaon Interactive Ports Their Marketing Apps from Tango to ARKit

Apple has billed ARKit as a means to turn millions of iPhones and iPads into augmented reality devices. The refrain is similar for Kaon Interactive, a developer of product catalog apps for businesses.

Apple AR: Edmunds Previews Parking Fit for Car Customers with ARKit App

IKEA can help customers determine if a couch fits in their living room, but who is going to help them figure out if their new SUV will fit in the garage?

Apple AR: Redbubble Throws Pillows in AR with ARKit Update

While IKEA will employ ARKit to help you see how that new couch looks in your living room, Redbubble wants to show you throw pillows that match.

Apple AR: Army of Robots Enlists ARKit for First-Person Shooter

The promise of augmented reality when it comes to gaming is the conversion of the player's real-world environment into a virtual playground.

Apple AR: Lowe's Builds Pair of AR Apps with ARKit

Lowe's Home Improvement has been an early adopter of augmented and virtual reality in their business practices, so it was a bit of surprise that their name was absent from the ranks of companies launching ARKit apps last week.

Dev Report: Unity 2017.2 Is Almost Out. Updated.

Being on the bleeding edge is a place that you will get cut from time to time, as has been the case for many developers in the HoloLens space.

Apple AR: Star Wars & LucasArts Veterans Create Life-Sized HoloChess Game with ARKit

Until Star Wars Jedi Challenges arrives in November, a forthcoming ARKit revision of HoloGrid: Monster Battle from Tippett Studios and Happy Giant, might be the closest most Star Wars fans can get to playing the HoloChess game from the movie.

Apple AR: Human Anatomy Atlas Journeys to the Center of the Body with ARKit

An update to the Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 enhances the study of the human body with augmented reality courtesy of iOS 11 and ARKit.

News: Aireal Places AR Content Anywhere in the World with Geographic Coordinates

While ARKit and ARCore are poised to bring AR experiences to millions of mobile devices, one company is poised to anchor those experiences anywhere in the world with just a set of geographic coordinates.

HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface for the HoloLens, Part 4 (Creating Objects from Code)

After previously learning how to make the material of an object change with the focus of an object, we will build on that knowledge by adding new objects through code. We will accomplish this by creating our bounding box, which in the end is not actually a box, as you will see.

Market Reality: AR Investors & Influencers Respond to Apple's Big AR 'Meh'

The launch of the latest line of iPhones came and went without major revelations for advanced AR hardware other than the next iteration of processors and cameras.

Apple AR: Occipital's ARKit App Offers Room Scanning on Par with Tango for iPhones

In off-record discussions with AR experts, the consensus on ARKit is that it takes a software approach to the depth-sensors available on Tango devices. As a result, the toolkit has shortcomings, such as detecting walls and vertical surfaces.

Apple AR: Cambria & Markilux Match IKEA with ARKit Apps for Home Makeovers

IKEA won't be alone among ARKit apps for visualizing home décor and improvements when iOS 11 arrives next week.

HoloLens 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface for the HoloLens, Part 3 (Focus & Materials)

We started with our system manager in the previous lesson in our series on building dynamic user interfaces, but to get there, aside from the actual transform, rotation, and scaling objects, we need to make objects out of code in multiple ways, establish delegates and events, and use the surface of an object to inform our toolset placement.

Apple AR: The Box Gives the Gift of AR with ARKit

If giving truly is better than receiving, then The Box AR should be the best ARKit app available when iOS 11 releases next week.

Apple AR: IKEA Takes the Wraps Off of Its ARKit App

When Apple introduced ARKit earlier this year, they trotted out IKEA as one of the companies it was working with to build an augmented reality app that lets customers see furniture as it would appear in their home.

Apple AR: ARKit Bestows iOS Apps Thyng & Holo with Ability to Stick Digital Things Anywhere

One of the byproducts of the success of Pokémon Go was the viral images that made the rounds on social media of people putting Pikachus, Charmanders, and their brethren in compromising positions. Snapchat has a similar claim to fame, most recently with the inexplicable popularity of the dancing hotdog.

Apple AR: Apple's ARKit Launch Partners Include MLB, Directive Games & More

CEO (and NR50 member) Tim Cook and Apple unveiled the long-awaited lineup of next-generation iPhones today on stage of the Steve Jobs Theater, packed with hardware improvements to facilitate AR experiences from ARKit, which will arrive with the iOS 11 on Sept. 19.

Brief Reality: Plattar, NativeScript & Gadget Flow Offer Tools for ARKit Apps

The release of iOS 11 and ARKit is probably the biggest event for mobile developers since the advent of the App Store.

Apple AR: Pixie Enlists ARKit to Help You Find Your Keys

When it comes to finding lost things, the joke goes that it's always in the last place you look. With an assist from ARKit, Pixie can make your iPhone the first and last place you look for that missing item.

Apple AR: Fight Zombies Armed with ARKit in ARZombi

While The Walking Dead has brand recognition for its AR game, ARZombi has ARKit.

News: Attend AWE Europe 2017 with a Discount from Next Reality

On Oct. 19-20, the MOC Exhibition Center in Munich, Germany will play host to the Augmented World Expo (AWE) Europe 2017.

Apple AR: Scope AR Updates Remote AR for ARKit

Ahead of the highly-anticipated iPhone unveiling and iOS 11 launch, augmented reality developer Scope AR has confirmed that the iOS version of Remote AR, their live support video calling app, will support iOS 11 and ARKit immediately.

News: Ericsson Ventures Head Believes AR Market Might Take Five Years or More to Mature

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.

Market Reality: Techstars Seeks Startups for Accelerator Program

Outside of early military applications, augmented reality is a relatively new technology. It stands to reason that the next company to make a splash in AR would be a startup, and Techstars wants to help.

Dev Report: Microsoft Unleashes Trio of Updates & Meta 2 Supports SteamVR

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.

News: Varidesk Raises App to Visualize & Purchase Standing Desks

The standing desk movement has gained momentum over the past few years as research has pointed to the detrimental health effects of sitting at a desk all day.

News: Research Papers & Patents Point to Magic Leap's AR Ambitions

In June at the eMerge Americas investors conference, Magic Leap founder (and NR50 member) Rony Abovitz proclaimed that the launch of their flagship product was "not far away."

News: The Walking Dead Doubles Down on AR with Another Mobile App

It seems like it was just last week that AMC and Next Games unveiled their location-based zombie game based on hit TV series The Walking Dead. (Wait, actually it was just last week.)

HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface for the HoloLens, Part 2 (The System Manager)

Now that we have installed the toolkit, set up our prefabs, and prepared Unity for export to HoloLens, we can proceed with the fun stuff involved in building a dynamic user interface. In this section, we will build the system manager.

News: Share the HoloLens Experience Through MR Studio ViewPoint from Arvizio

HoloLens developer Arvizio has expanded its collaboration suite of tools for enterprises with a device that can stream and record mixed reality experiences in high-definition for local and remote audiences.

News: Google Developer Days Sheds Some Light on ARCore

During Google Developer Days, taking place now at the ICE Congress Center in Krakow, Poland, an introductory session on ARCore provides some insights on how the platform operates.

Brief Reality: Exhibitors Pitch Their AR Ideas at IFA 2017

While not specifically an augmented reality conference, IFA 2017 packed a plethora of presentations with AR themes, including devices with AR features from Sony and Motorola, a smartphone-based AR headset from Lenovo, and a new processor from Huawei that will facilitate AR experiences.

News: Huawei Flexes Their AR Muscles with AI-Infused Kirin 970

Over the weekend at IFA 2017 in Berlin, Huawei introduced the Kirin 970 processor, the first of its kind to include artificial intelligence baked into the chip.

News: Vertebrae Standing Up AR Ad Platform for ARKit Arrival

When iOS releases in the next few weeks, consumers on both iOS and Android operating systems can expect to see more AR ads in the mobile web browsers thanks to Vertebrae, an advertising platform for immersive media.