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The way we tell stories is about to change. Imagine you're hearing a story when suddenly characters and images from the tale start to appear in your world. This immersive way of storytelling is in the not-so-distant future thanks to the Microsoft HoloLens and Rémy Martin.

This week, augmented reality spawns in the world of online role-playing games with a soft launch down under from an indie game developer. Meanwhile, in Asia, another startup wins a coveted award for its AR headset. Finally, an established player in the mobile AR touches up its feature set with an app update.

Meta Company filed suit today against a former employee and his startup DreamWorld USA, Inc. for the misappropriation of trade secrets and confidential information.

The Augmented World Expo (AWE), the biggest event for augmented, virtual, and mixed reality companies, developers, customers, and connoisseurs, is happening right now. You know what that means for us here at Next Reality? Companies presenting and exhibiting at AWE are releasing news like crazy.

With many of the companies working in augmented and mixed reality focused on the Augmented World Expo, the finance side of the industry has been relatively quiet.

For companies wary of the temperature, PTC just made it easier for them to dip their toes in the waters of augmented reality.

At the 2017 Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara today, smartglasses maker Epson introduced two new augmented reality headsets from its Moverio line of products.

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.

There are already a fewways to use your home computer on the go, but none of them feel very natural when you're out and about, and are clunky options at best. Samsung wants to change that with Monitorless, their upcoming augmented reality smartglasses, which offer remote desktop viewing capabilities as well as the ability to switch between augmented and virtual reality modes using electrochromic glass.

Universal Studios and Cinemark Theaters have enlisted mobile augmented reality game Seek to promote The Mummy, a reboot of the action-adventure film franchise starring summer movie mainstay Tom Cruise.

Over the past week, we are seeing more companies capitalizing on services leveraging augmented reality. One company secured funding to expand their service, while two other companies grow its own services through acquisition.

The common thread between this week's Brief Reality stories is that augmented reality is beginning to prove its worth as a technology that improves workflows and processes. From customer service to healthcare to manufacturing, augmented reality is helping companies improve productivity.

A virtual design and construction services firm has built an augmented reality application that uses the Microsoft HoloLens to improve the efficiency of quality control on construction sites.

Verizon will be exclusively selling the ASUS ZenFone AR, which supports Tango (Google's mobile AR platform) and Daydream VR.

The list of HoloLens applications continues to grow as more companies discover ways to enhance their operations using augmented reality. Air New Zealand is the latest to show interest in the technology, demonstrating their vision for AR in a new concept video.

Google announced several new devices (as well as updates to existing devices) that will take advantage of the company's augmented and virtual reality platforms.

Marketing and healthcare, two of the leading industries in the adoption of augmented reality, continue to demonstrate applications for the technology in their businesses. Meanwhile, improvements to augmented reality devices are just around the corner with new developments from two display makers.

If you're a developer in the augmented and mixed reality space, there's a high probability that you're intimately familiar with the 3D application and game engine Unity. In May, at VisionSummit 2017, Microsoft announced that 91% of all HoloLens applications have been made with the software. But there's a section of Unity that you may not be familiar with, which has become very important to augmented, mixed, and virtual reality (known collectively as XR, for "extended reality") — Unity Labs.

If you have a HoloLens, you can now control the lighting throughout your home or office via holographic controls using the free Hue Lights app in the Windows Store. The app, made by California-based AfterNow, works with the Philips Hue colored lighting system and is much more polished than the prototype we saw in January.

A Seattle development team is putting the "ARRRR" in AR with the maiden voyage of Captain Blimey, an augmented reality game for iOS and Android devices that puts a pirate premise on Pokémon GO.