Next Reality Features

News: Snapchat Unlocks Snappables Augmented Reality Games for Brands Including Candy Crush, Bud Light & Dunkin' Donuts

Less than two months after launching its augmented reality platform for casual gaming and shared experiences, Snapchat is ready to make Snappables available to advertisers.

News: Looking Glass Launches 8K Immersive Display, a High-Resolution Holographic-Style Window into the 3D World

The next phase of the holographic display is upon us, and Looking Glass is aggressively making sure that it's at the tip of the spear when it comes to leading that charge.

News: HoloLens Can Give Tank Crews 360-Degree X-Ray Vision on Missions

As a commercial and potentially consumer product, one might assume it very unlikely to see the Microsoft HoloLens in the military marketplace. And that assumption would be completely wrong. One company from the Ukraine is currently working on using the mixed reality head-mounted computer for 360-degree vision inside armored tanks. If a tank crew could see the entire battlefield there are in, they would likely have a better chance of accomplishing their mission and avoiding damage. Tanks are l...

HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface, Part 6 (Delegates & Events)

In this chapter, we want to start seeing some real progress in our dynamic user interface. To do that, we will have our newly crafted toolset from the previous chapter appear where we are looking when we are looking at an object. To accomplish this we will be using a very useful part of the C# language: delegates and events.

News: Magic Leap Books Augmented Reality Experience with Air New Zealand

If touring the scenic vistas behind the Lord of the Rings film franchise doesn't persuade tourists to visit New Zealand, perhaps immersive content viewed through Magic Leap One will do the trick.

News: It's Time to Ask — Is Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates Secretly a HoloLens Hater?

Despite their sometimes fluffy reputations and occasionally ethically compromised viewpoints, tech evangelists are important, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The right passionate voice behind the right technology platform or piece of hardware can sometimes spell the difference between fostering a community of potential users and watching a product die on the vine.

News: Follow in the Footsteps of Forensic Detectives & Solve Crimes with Oxygen's Augmented Reality App

The crime procedural show is the perhaps the most direct path to the average TV viewer's heart. Could the same hold true for augmented reality games?

News: 'The Walking Dead' Pokémon GO Knockoff Gets a Launch Date, More Details Revealed

While it has been slower to arrive than a walker limping through thick Georgia mud, location-based augmented reality game Walking Dead: Our World finally has a confirmed launch date: July 12.

News: DAQRI's New Smart Glasses Made Tough for the Manufacturing Sector

DAQRI, a company mostly known for its odd but fun-looking industrial Smart Helmet, unveiled their new Smart Glasses product at CES 2017. Their smartglasses look like a strange attempt to answer the Microsoft HoloLens, and the price tag of $4,995 for the developer's edition reinforces that notion.

News: Mobile Apps Come Full Circle — AR Fart Machines Have Arrived

It's long past time to face the facts: farts are funny. The first fart joke dates back nearly 4,000 years to the ancient Sumerian people. References to flatulence were also found in ancient Greece within the works of Aristophanes. (More like Aristo-fannies, am I right?) A standard in practical jokes, the whoopie cushion debuted way back during the time of the Roman Empire.

News: Lenovo's New Android-Based AR Headset Hits the HoloLens Where It Hurts — Enterprise Applications

Now that Microsoft has squarely focused on the enterprise market with the HoloLens 2, it appears Lenovo is content to play follow-the-leader with its new augmented reality headset.

News: First Online Multiplayer HoloLens Game Lets You Battle with Virtual Cars Against Others Anywhere

On Friday, game developer PreviewLabs released the first online multiplayer game for the Microsoft HoloLens.

News: 'Stranger Things' Star Millie Bobby Brown Launches Makeup Brand Powered by Snapchat Augmented Reality

The 15-year-old star of the 1980s-inspired hit series Stranger Things, Millie Bobby Brown, may have (spoiler alert) lost all her powers as the character "Eleven," but in the real world, she still has augmented reality in her arsenal.

News: Office Depot Updates Elf Yourself App with the Tiniest Bit of AR

Now that the holiday season has officially kicked off, Office Depot has updated its popular Elf Yourself app with a few new augmented reality options.

News: Sony Opens AR & VR Capture Studio with Tech from Dell, Deloitte Digital, & Intel

The availability of space for filming immersive content has just gotten bigger with the launch of Innovation Studios by Sony Pictures Entertainment.

News: Google Unveils Visual Positioning Service for Tango

At the Google I/O keynote presentation today, Clay Bavor, Vice President of Virtual Reality for Google, shared a number of new initiatives in virtual and augmented reality. This included new services for the Tango platform called visual positioning service, or VPS.

News: Snapchat Celebrates Harry Potter's Birthday with Quidditch Bitmojis

Now even muggles can see how they'd look chasing the Golden Snitch on a Nimbus 2000. That's because Snapchat is gifting Harry Potter fans with a 3D Bitmoji Lens that adorns their digital doppelgängers in the robes of the houses of Hogwarts.

Hands-On: Hands-On with Magic Leap & Weta Workshop's Dr. Grordbort's Invaders

Over the last few years, the only thing teased by Magic Leap more than the Magic Leap One itself has been the company's flagship gaming title Dr. Grordbort's Invaders. The game, developed by New Zealand studio Weta Workshop, finally got its debut last week during the L.E.A.P. conference in Los Angeles.

HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface, Part 11 (Rotating Objects)

Continuing our series on building a dynamic user interface for the HoloLens, this guide will show how to rotate the objects that we already created and moved and scaled in previous lessons.

News: Artemis Smart Mirror Shows Off AR Vanity for Coty's Wella Professionals Salons

If you salivate at the idea of waking up to the Jarvis-powered smart window from the opening minutes of Marvel's Iron Man, then connected home appliance maker CareOS is here to make your playboy billionaire philanthropist dreams come true.

News: ODG Patents Headed to Auction Block After Failed Magic Leap Acquisition Deal, Report Says

Despite the hype and potential of immersive computing, the augmented reality industry is showing that it is not invincible, as another AR hardware maker, this time Osterhout Design Group (ODG), is reportedly going out of business.

News: Startup YOUAR Demos Persistent, Cross-Platform AR Experiences via ARKit & ARCore

Another AR cloud candidate has emerged in YOUAR, a startup that has developed a new system that enables persistent augmented reality experiences on iPhones and Android devices.

HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface

Generally speaking, in terms of modern devices, the more simple you make an interface to navigate, the more successful the product is.

How To: See Instant Translations of Foreign Text Using Google Glass

Google Glass is all about transforming the world around us with little to zero interaction from the wearer. Much of this is done using augmented reality—a live view of physical, real-world environments that are augmented by computer-generated input in the form of graphics, sights, and sounds.

Breaking: The Meta 2 Augmented Reality Headset Is Shipping

The Meta 2 developer kit has finally begun shipping! Gary Garcia, the senior director of customer success at Meta, just sent out an email that they are shipping out to the first round of preorder customers. Waves will be building from there, up to far higher manufacturing rates near the end of Q1 of 2017.

News: Developer Brings Street Fighter into Real World as Multiplayer Augmented Reality Mobile Game

The guy who recreated Super Mario Bros. as a first-person obstacle course is back with an augmented reality take on another classic game.

News: Google's ARCore Moves Past Apple's ARKit in the Race for Shared Augmented Reality Experiences

On Tuesday, at Google's I/O developer conference, the company announced a huge update to its ARCore augmented reality toolkit that matches the latest features of ARKit, and surpasses Apple's AR platform via support for shared experiences.

News: MagiMask Is Probably Not the AR Headset You're Looking for, but Offers a Cute Trick for Mobile AR

So far, consumer augmented reality headsets haven't found mainstream success. That's primarily because no manufacturer has managed to hit the sweet spot between slim form factor, performance, and affordability.

News: Meta 2 Developers Kit to Feature PMD's Depth-Sensing Technology

Meta's long-awaited Meta 2 development kit finally began shipping in late-December last year, after having been delayed about six months. While very few have received a dev kit at this point, some more information about the headset has just been announced; Depth-sensing technology from pmdtechnologies is included in the dev kit headset.

News: Super Mario Augmented Reality Game Connects the Past with Gaming's Future

Not all remakes of video game classics turn out well, but a new augmented reality take on Super Mario is likely to draw in fans of the Nintendo hit.

News: Welding Simulator Uses Augmented Reality to Teach Students Safely

With products and solutions offered by the likes of Scope AR, Trimble, DAQRI, VIATechnik, and others, augmented reality is becoming a hot commodity for improving productivity while maintaining safety in the construction and manufacturing industries.

News: Iran's High Council of Virtual Spaces Bans Pokémon GO

We've seen plenty of good, bad, and weird things that have come out of the worldwide augmented reality game Pokémon GO, including murder and location-based bans, but nothing on a large scale. That was, of course, until Iran decided to ban the game country-wide.

News: Doritos & Mountain Dew Remix Their Super Bowl Songs of Fire & Ice on Snapchat

After pouring out $10 million for 60 seconds of Super Bowl advertising time, Doritos and Mountain Dew continued their Sunday marketing binge on Snapchat.

News: Zappar Pitches Baseball AR Mini-Game for Wise Snacks

Wise Snacks wants baseball fans to reach for potato chips instead of peanuts and Cracker Jacks, and it's calling augmented reality out of the bullpen to close the deal.

News: Automatic 3D Model Optimization Solution Simplygon Was Just Acquired by Microsoft

Any developer working with the HoloLens knows that the fight for polygons is a very real conflict. For all of the magic it creates, the HoloLens is a high-powered mobile device that has all the typical processing limitations of a mobile device.

News: Rick & Morty Fan Creates Snapchat Lens to Transport You into the Adult Swim Universe

It's not an official app, but for fans of Rick and Morty, it's a welcome piece of the series' universe until the recently renewed animated show returns to Adult Swim.

News: Experience Holograms in Your Pocket with 4DViews' New AR & VR Mobile App

4DViews, the volumetric capture company that films actors and performers in augmented and virtual reality for things like movies, TV series, and applications, has just released the app 4DViews: Raise Virtual to Reality, to demonstrate its technology for smartphones.

Dev Report: Get Your Mobile AR Apps to Go Cross-Platform with Unity's Experimental ARInterface

With technology giants like Apple and Google finally entering the fray, the move toward mass adoption of augmented reality is ramping up. Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore will allow entirely new categories of apps to be made. Unfortunately, in a world of heavy competition, getting these two frameworks to work together wasn't a priority for either company.

Have You Seen This?: New Spatial Map Measuring Tool & Beating Heart App for HoloLens

While all of my previous Have You Seen This? posts have all focused on individual HoloLens apps in the Windows Store, this time I'll be sharing a couple at once. These holographic applications are really simple in scope, so there is not a lot to say about them, yet they are interesting enough for me to want to share them with you.

News: We Are TV Aims to Gamify Your TV Shows with AR

If you're like me, then you're rarely just watching TV. You're probably also simultaneously following reactions on Twitter during a live airing of The Walking Dead. Or perhaps you're checking your fantasy football scores while a real game is in progress. Or you might just have the TV on in the background while you're writing an article about a new augmented reality app.