Next Reality

Market Reality: Magic Leap Demotes Execs, Artie Makes AR Smarter, & Walmart Adds AR to Its Shopping Cart

Signaling a new direction forward for the company, Magic Leap shook up its executive suite by re-assigning to top leaders to new advisory roles. Meanwhile, a new startup backed by Hollywood executives, tech venture firms, and notable angel investors plans to bring new life to AR for marketing entertainment properties.

News: Lego Harnesses Apple's Latest Augmented Reality Abilities in Playgrounds App

The app that Lego demoed at this year's iPhone launch event is now available in the App Store, and it showcases several new capabilities available in ARKit 2.0.

News: Startup Artie Aims to Give Smart Pills to Augmented Reality Characters

Hollywood has already proven that it's on board with augmented reality, with examples ranging from Avengers: Infinity War to Ralph Breaks the Internet. But one startup wants to make the augmented reality content that's being used to promote TV and film entertainment smarter.

News: 'Atlanta' Actor Lakeith Stanfield Walks an Augmented Reality Tightrope for New York Times Magazine

The New York Times has made a habit of publishing augmented reality stories throughout 2018, and now the media giant's magazine is getting into the act, too.

News: Magic Leap Shakes Up C-Suite, Shuffles Two Top Executives to Advisory Roles

In the aftermath of the launch of the Magic Leap One, Magic Leap has ejected two more executives from their leadership roles.

News: Insomniac Games Releases Seedling — the First Paid Augmented Reality Game for Magic Leap One

One the leading game developers for the PlayStation 4 and Oculus Rift platforms, Insomniac Games, is finally releasing its first major augmented reality title: Seedling for the Magic Leap One.

News: Unity Unite Conference Session Videos Give Devs Inside Tips on Magic Leap, ARKit, & ARCore Development

Augmented reality developers who have exhausted their treasure trove of video tutorials and panels from the recent Magic Leap developer conference can now shift their continuing education attention to Unity.

News: Google Arts & Culture App Lets You Turn Your Home into an AR Museum Featuring the Works of Vermeer

There is not a single museum that houses all of the 36 paintings of Johannes Vermeer, so Google decided to come up with a solution to give art aficionados a venue to see the artist's work all in one place — your home.

News: Magic Leap Reveals Plan to Offer Cheddar Video News Channel on Magic Leap One

The team at Magic Leap just got a millennial-style boost with the announcement that financial news network Cheddar is coming to the Magic Leap One.

News: Tesla Files Patent for AR Manufacturing Tool, Elon Musk Talks Factory Innovation, Weed, & SEC Fine on '60 Minutes'

New documents reveal that electric car company Tesla has filed a surprising new patent that has nothing to do with batteries or autonomous driving and everything to do with augmented reality.

News: ARCore 1.6 Gifts Developers with Improved Lighting & Support for Screen Capturing

Christmas has arrived early for ARCore app developers, as Google just unwrapped a few iterative improvements to the augmented reality toolkit in version 1.6.

News: Walmart & Target Unwrap New Augmented Reality Features to Bring in Holiday Shoppers

This year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be fertile ground for augmented reality to show its worth, as both Walmart and Target have crafted immersive experiences designed to engage shoppers in the coming weeks.

News: Hands-On with Spatial's Remote Meeting App on Microsoft HoloLens

In recent years, many software publishers have tried to sell the business community on remote meetings via VR, but if social media chatter is any indication, it hasn't taken off in a big way just yet. However, for some, the notion of holding remote meetings using augmented reality, a medium in which you're still directly tied to the real world and not closed off in a blindfold-style VR headset, might be the better solution.

News: Hands-On with Magic Leap's Avatar Chat, Remote Virtual Meetings in AR Have Arrived

Unlike the realm of virtual reality, augmented reality is less about losing yourself in some fantasy environment, and more about getting things done in the real world. So while we've seen some great games that capture the imagination on devices like the Magic Leap One and the HoloLens, when it comes to real-world usage, the biggest developments coming for AR apps that are the more practical ones.

News: Caltech Researchers Use HoloLens to Give Directions & Object Identification to the Visually Impaired

When computers have vision but people don't, why not have the former help the latter? That's the gist behind the Cognitive Augmented Reality Assistant (CARA), a new HoloLens app developed by the California Institute of Technology.

Market Reality: US Army Chooses Microsoft Over Magic Leap & Niantic Puts Its Money on Consumer Smartglasses

The recent announcement of a $480 million US Army contract awarded to Microsoft over Magic Leap for supplying 100,000 augmented reality headsets shows just a how lucrative the enterprise (and government) sector can be for AR.

News: Pokémon GO Maker Niantic Looks to Smartglasses Future with Investment in AR Display Maker DigiLens

The company behind augmented reality's first real gaming hit, Pokémon GO, is quietly making moves toward supporting the rapidly growing smartglasses space that may one day move its content away from smartphones and tablets and onto AR lenses positioned on your face.

News: Universal Studios Augmented Reality App Lets You Recreate a Scene from 'Welcome to Marwen' Film

In a world where augmented reality is becoming the hero of the movie marketing, Universal Studios has decided to use the technology to reinvent the traditional movie trailer, a time-tested tactic of film promotion, in support of the forthcoming Robert Zemeckis film, Welcome to Marwen.

News: Occipital's Structure Core Sensor Promises to Give Any Device the Spatial Mapping Powers of a HoloLens

Occipital's initial augmented reality module, the Structure Sensor, gave iPhones and iPads the depth-sensing abilities of the HoloLens. Now, the company's latest product promises to do the same for Android devices, as well as augmented reality and virtual reality headsets and other devices.

News: ModiFace Applies Its Augmented Reality Tech to Nail Polish with Fingertip-Tracking Feature

French cosmetics giant L'Oréal isn't wasting any time putting its new subsidiary, ModiFace, to work. On Thursday, the company launched a new tool that enables a photo-realistic augmented reality simulation of nail polish shades and textures to be accurately displayed on a user's fingers in real time.

News: US Army Declares Microsoft the Winner in Battle for $480M AR Headset Contract

In their first head-to-head major contract clash, Microsoft has emerged victorious over Magic Leap, as the US Army has awarded a $480 million contract to the HoloLens maker.

News: AR Optics Maker WaveOptics Strikes Alliance with China's Goertek to Produce Smartglasses for Consumers

WaveOptics, makers of diffractive waveguides, has inched closer toward getting products featuring its technology to market through a production partnership with a consumer electronics company whose clients include Google, Microsoft, and Sony.

News: Augmented Reality Startup Phiar Paves Path to $3 Million in Seed Funding for AI-Powered Navigation Solution

Another contestant has emerged in the race to deliver a mainstream augmented reality car navigation system, with Silicon Valley-based Phiar picking up $3 million in seed funding to launch its own artificial intelligence-based mobile app by mid-2019.

News: Magic Leap Roars into the Auto World via Kia Stinger App from RelayCars

Magic Leap One owners, start your virtual engines, as automotive virtual reality developer RelayCars has published an app to Magic Leap World that lets users customize and test drive a 2019 Kia Stinger.

News: BAE Systems Uses HoloLens to Create AR Command Interfaces Straight Out of 'Minority Report' for British Royal Navy

The interactive displays of the future as visualized in Steven Spielberg's science fiction classic Minority Report, as well as the augmented reality interfaces used by millionaire playboy Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, are now closer to becoming reality in the military realm.

News: Amazon Sumerian & 8th Wall Weave Web AR Experience for 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' Movie

Sony Pictures has tapped the powers of augmented reality as provided by startup 8th Wall & the Amazon Sumerian development platform to help it promote the latest motion picture manifestation of Spider-Man.

News: New York Times Lets You Visit Statue of Liberty's Torch Without Trip to NYC via Augmented Reality

While a new museum to house the original torch of the Statue of Liberty is under construction on Liberty Island and scheduled to open in May 2019, New York Times readers can now view the sculpture in their own space through augmented reality.

Market Reality: Magic Leap Goes to Work, Snap Speeds Up AR Spectacles Timeline, & Apple's CEO Preaches the Future of AR

Now that the Magic Leap One is out in the real world, the mystery behind the company lies not in whether it will actually ship a product, but when it will ship a consumer product. Or, does CEO Rony Abovitz steer the company in a different direction first?

News: Vermeer Beta iPhone App Lets You Use Augmented Reality to Map Out Your Drone Flight

Augmented reality and drones already go together like turkey and stuffing, but a new iOS app adds some spice to the combination with a new kind of flight path automation.

News: Former Leap Motion Exec Returns to Filmmaking with 'Merger' VR Film Depicting AR Workspace

Last month, Leap Motion's vice president of design and global creative director, Keiichi Matsuda (a member of the NR30), suddenly left the company. Just days later, a story leaked that revealed that Leap Motion had twice failed to lock in a potential deal with Apple.

News: The Enterprise Leap — Robots, Gremlins, & Games Won't Save Magic Leap, but Tapping the Inner Child of CEOs Just Might

Mystery is a tricky thing. Used correctly, it can give onlookers the impression that wondrous and perhaps valuable things are afoot. However, once the veil of suspension of disbelief is removed in any significant way, that same mystery can quickly turn into not just skepticism, but outright anger at what may have seemed like an attempt to dupe trusting onlookers.

News: David Bowie's Legacy Lives On in Forthcoming Augmented Reality App

Famed singer-songwriter David Bowie will return to the real world as part of an augmented reality app launching on Jan. 8, 2019, which would have been his 72nd birthday.

News: This Augmented Reality Black Friday Ad from Footwear Retailer DSW Is Like a Scene from 'Black Mirror'

If you're looking into buying shoes from DSW on Black Friday, then you can save an extra 20% — but only if you smile more.

News: Snap Rolling Out New Spectacles with AR Features by End of Year, Report Says

The augmented reality smartglasses future that Snap founder Evan Spiegel has teased for so long may be closer than many realize.

News: Tim Cook Takes to HBO to Promote the Future of Augmented Reality, Addresses Apple AR Glasses Question

On Sunday, Apple CEO Tim Cook (the number one person on our NR30 list) made a rare television appearance to talk about and show off his current obsession: augmented reality.

News: Sennheiser AR Headphones for Magic Leap One Now Available to Purchase

Later this week, Black Friday will mark the start to the holiday shopping season, but if you're buying for a Magic Leap One owner, you can buy their ideal gift now.

Market Reality: North Opens Smartglasses Retail Stores, Magic Leap & Microsoft Court Devs, & Another Exec Exits Snap

The North remembers...that smartglasses are the future! Game of Thrones jokes aside, the smartglasses startup opened its doors, and we visited its Brooklyn store to get our hands the consumer-focused Focals smartglasses.

News: Microsoft's HoloLens Morphs Paris Museum Model of Mont-Saint-Michel into Masterpiece of AR

Amid the opulent and historic confines of Paris, Microsoft is now hosting an exhibit at a local museum that brings a historic map of a Normandy tourist destination to life in augmented reality.

News: Mojo Vision Raises $50M to Replace Smartphones & Devices with 'Invisible Computing' AR

On Thursday, Mojo Vision, a startup comprised of former engineers from Apple, Amazon, Google, and other Silicon Valley mainstays, emerged from stealth backed by $50 million in funding for a hands-free augmented reality platform that runs without smartphones, tablets, or other devices.

News: Magic Leap Launches App Creator Grant Program Awarding Up to $500,000 in Funding

On Thursday, Magic Leap decided to step up its efforts to foster its developer community by launching the Independent Creator Program.