Next Reality Features
News: HoloLens Will Be Your AR Piano Teacher in the Future
You've likely seen light-up musical keyboards that teach you how to play a song with visual cues, but few of those devices exist and have a limited number of songs you can actually learn. But Karl Baumann and his HoloLens Hackathon team figured out that in mixed reality, you can learn music with visual cues with any piano.
Dev Report: Google's ARCore Bests Apple's ARKit with Tracking for Walls, Ceilings, Even Ramps
This morning Google announced ARCore, an SDK for Android devices that will allow augmented reality developers to add new functionality to Android 7.0 and up, all without any special hardware other than the camera of a phone.
News: Magic Leap Made Me Cry, Probably for the Last Time. Here's Why That's the Good News
A lot of digital ink has been spilled heaping scorn on Magic Leap. Much of that media schadenfreude was due to what some believed were unmet promises versus some of the early hype around the product. Others just seemed to be rubbed the wrong way by the startup's Apple-esque secrecy and penchant for attempting to coin new terms and frameworks for things that were, mostly, already in play.
News: 3D Scanning App for iPhone Makes Capturing & Sharing AR Content as Easy as Taking a Picture
Augmented reality app developer Laan Labs has shared a preview of a beta app that achieves 3D scanning with just an iPhone and produces highly-detailed models for sharing with others.
News: Sony Is Launching a Location-Based Ghostbusters Training Experience in Augmented Reality
We've got almost a full year until the next installment of Ghostbusters arrives, but in the meantime, it turns out that Sony is about to launch an augmented reality experience that will let fans use immersive computing to combat the franchise's whimsical apparitions.
News: What We Know About Magic Leap's Amazing Tech So Far
Virtual reality headsets are all the rage these days, and among the menagerie of tech companies gunning for the top spot, there's one mysterious startup that is ahead of the game—Magic Leap—and you can tell just by watching their latest demo video of their product in action.
News: Facebook Adds New Story Time Content to Portal, New AR Features to Portal TV
Friends and family receiving new Portal devices for Christmas will have some extra stocking stuffers in the form of new AR features.
News: Microsoft Adds Spatial App Functionality to Office 365's Teams App, Android & Web Interaction Demoed
Months ago, we showed you some of the powers of Spatial, the HoloLens app that allows groups of workers to collaborate in augmented reality using 3D avatars.
News: China-Based Startup 0glasses Looks to Challenge Nreal Light with Its RealX Augmented Reality Smartglasses
Brace yourselves: Nreal Light clones are coming. Since the China-based startup wowed the crowd at CES 2019 with its consumer-centric smartglasses, a number of followers from Asia have emerged, and all with very similar aesthetics to Nreal Light.
News: Touch & Feel Things That Don't Exist with Dexmo's Exoskeleton Gloves
One of the disadvantages of the digital world is that you can't pick it up and touch it. While that can feel like less of a problem in virtual reality, where you're already holding controllers, mixed reality environments—like the one you'd experience in Microsoft's HoloLens—suffer from a lack of physical connection with the digital objects that appear in your real world. Dexmo aims to solve that problem with a relatively intimidating new controller that encompasses your hands.
News: Trimble Releases SketchUp Viewer, the First Commercial HoloLens Application in the Windows Store
Visualization is one of the obvious commercial applications for technology such as Microsoft's HoloLens. The ability to see the assets of a project in different scales—from micro to larger-than-life—with a quick air tap will play a large part in the coming augmented reality revolution. Whether the assets are art for a game, interior design, raw financial data, or architecture, data visualization will play an important role in the future. This is due, in part, to our ability to absorb informat...
News: Apple Brings New Characters & Features to Animoji — Then Destroys Samsung's AR Emoji with Memoji
Alongside ARKit 2.0, Apple revealed new Animojis alongside new Memoji virtual doppelgangers that compete with functionality quite similar to that of Samsung's AR Emoji.
News: Google's ARCore Updates Bring Scene Viewer for AR on Web & Search, Improvements to Image Recognition & Ambient Lighting
After announcing at Google I/O 2019 that augmented reality content would come to Search, Google revealed how it would make that happen with the latest round of updates to ARCore.
News: Google's ARCore Will Do for Android Hardware What Apple's ARKit Has Done for iPhones
When Apple announced their ARKit platform in June, they immediately staked the claim to the largest augmented reality hardware platform, with millions of iPhones and iPads compatible with iOS 11 becoming AR devices this fall.
News: Microsoft's Alex Kipman Predicts Three Trends in Augmented & Virtual Reality for 2018
In a LinkedIn post published on Tuesday, Microsoft's leading advocate for the HoloLens made a prediction that the mixing of immersive technologies will define augmented reality in 2018.
HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface, Part 7 (Unlocking the Menu Movement)
In the previous section of this series on dynamic user interfaces for HoloLens, we learned about delegates and events. At the same time we used those delegates and events to not only attach our menu system to the users gaze, but also to enable and disable the menu based on certain conditions. Now let's take that knowledge and build on it to make our menu system a bit more comfortable.
News: Orboot Reboots Globe with Augmented Reality Lessons for Kids
Globes used to be standard in households, usurped in many ways by modern mobile and desktop applications. But one company believes they can upgrade the globe for the 21st century.
How To: Buy a Microsoft HoloLens
Microsoft's HoloLens project is shaping up to be the forerunner of augmented reality. With jaw-dropping features that would allow you to bring entire football games into your living room and control software with your eyes, there's plenty to be excited about with the upcoming AR headset. Up until now, HoloLens has been seen as potential vaporware, considering that the technology it brings to the table is so futuristic that some folks have thought it wouldn't be possible any time soon. But a r...
News: Doctors Team Up to Use HoloLens & VR App to Perform Live Surgery from UK, India & US
The HoloLens has become a frequent sight in medical facilities around the world, but a new demonstration shows just how seamlessly it can be integrated into traditional medical procedures to improve the experience for physicians and patients alike.
News: Microsoft Launches HoloLens 2 Worldwide, Here's a Close-Up Look at the $3,500 Device (Updated)
The long wait is over — the best augmented reality device on the planet is finally available.
News: ManoMotion Updates Its Hand Tracking SDK for Smartphones with Skeleton Tracking
If two hands are better than one, then two hand-tracking SDKs must be better than one as well. After uSens announced its Hand Tracking SDK at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara on Thursday, ManoMotion unveiled the latest version of its own SDK. Both technologies give apps the ability to track hand gestures with just a smartphone camera.
News: Inputs for the HoloLens Can Be from Any Device... Even a Smartphone
We've highlighted the projects of Wavelength Studios a few times over recent months for their work in the augmented and mixed reality space. Since receiving their HoloLens headsets, they've been hard at work on both development community projects as well as efforts for clients. This brings us to their latest work—a way to control holograms on the HoloLens with our pocket-based modern miracles, also know as smartphones.
News: Is Magic Leap's Virtual Reality Demo Video Too Good to Be True?
Magic Leap, the virtual-reality software group backed by Google, just released a teaser video on their YouTube channel. In a word, it's amazing.
News: Augmented Reality Cinema App Takes You to the Movies—in Real World Locations
The yet-to-be released Augmented Reality Cinema app is sure to make avid movie fans across the world drool. The concept is genius and appears to be quite seamless as well: Simply install the app on your iPhone, take a stroll through your city (supported cities have not yet been released, but the video below shows London), and aim your phone at various locations to view movie scenes that have been previously shot there.
News: Would You Buy This $89 Mannequin Head to Store a VR or AR Headset On?
How do you safely store your augmented, virtual, or mixed reality headset when you're not using it? Cybust hopes you're willing to shell out $89 to display it like a sculpture around your house.
News: Magic Leap Releases Helio Experiments Demos, Finally Gives Us the Infamous AR Whale
You want whales? Ok, you'll get whales! That seems to be the unspoken message from Magic Leap via its latest update in the form of several new experiments posted inside its Helio app.
News: Hunt Zombies Instead of Pokémon with AR Game Based on the Walking Dead
Niantic pioneered location-based augmented reality gaming with Ingress and popularized it with Pokémon Go, but others have attempted to replicate the model without reaching the level of success that Niantic has garnered.
News: Apple Teams with Ariana Grande for '7 Rings' Animoji Music Video
The last six months have been filled with ups and downs for international music superstar Ariana Grande, but she's starting 2019 on a new, virtual foot, powered by Apple's iPhone TrueDepth camera.
News: BMW Invites You to Test Drive the X2 with Snapchat Lens
Snapchat has broken new ground in its augmented reality advertising efforts, as BMW has opted to show off its new X2 model in AR with the Augmented Trial Lens.
Dev Report: Vuforia 7's New Features Keep It Ahead in an ARKit, ARCore World
The advent of ARKit and ARCore has strengthened the demand for development tools to build augmented reality experiences for compatible iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.
News: Nickelodeon Reels in AR Mode for Popular Mobile Game Sky Whale
One of the most popular mobile games out there for kids has added an augmented reality mode that brings the titular character into the real world.
News: Mimesys Brings Its Version of Augmented Reality Video Calling to Magic Leap via Intel RealSense
The release of Avatar Chat for Magic Leap One and Spatial for HoloLens during the fourth quarter of 2018 appeared to revolutionize video calling via augmented reality.
News: Google Brings Marvel's Avengers & Childish Gambino to AR with Playground for Pixel
If you own a Google Pixel, you'll soon have augmented reality versions of Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, and Childish Gambino on your camera.
News: Watch the Red Bull Air Race in a Whole New Way with Flight Deck on HoloLens
At Vision Summit 2017, UK-based Rewind, one of the recent additions to the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Partner Program, showed off a HoloLens application called "Flight Deck" that genuinely blew me away. The idea of watching a live-action sports experience on a coffee table has been explored and mocked up, but Rewind not only has done it, they will be releasing it later this year.
Dev Report: A Breakdown of the What Apple's New ARKit Can Do for iPhones & iPads
At Apple's yearly event, the World Wide Developers Conference, the tech giant finally announced their decision to enter the augmented reality space. Through adding basic AR functionality to the beta release of Xcode 9, the development environment for Mac computers, as well as their line of iOS devices, the company has said they understand the importance of the tech.
News: Magic Leap May Have Shed Light on the Name of Its AR Operating System in Trademark Filing
It looks like Magic Leap is getting its ducks in a row to launch its Magic Leap One: Creator Edition as the company's name is once again showing up in US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) filings.
News: The Future of Augmented Reality Mainstream Adoption
What does mainstream augmented reality look like? I'm not talking about the stuff you see in concept videos and science fiction films. No. What does it really look like?
News: Make Apps for HoloLens in JavaScript with HoloJS
A new repository appeared in Microsoft's GitHub account a few months ago for a project called HoloJS. For those JavaScript developers out there that have been wanting to make HoloLens apps, this one's for you.
Developer Spotlight: AfterNow's Creative Approach to UX Design & IoT in Mixed Reality
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.
News: Walmart Turns Its iPhone App's Barcode Scanner into an Augmented Reality Price Comparison Tool
While many retailers have introduced try-before-you-buy features in their apps, Walmart has gone in another direction by bringing shoppers an augmented reality tool to help them compare products they want to buy.