Next Reality Features
News: Apple Tests Retail Waters for AR Hardware with MekaMon Gaming Robot
As it turns out, Apple did get AR hardware into its retail stores for the 2017 holiday shopping season, but it's not the headset we've been hearing rumors about for years; it's the MekaMon battle-bot.
News: Lionsgate Goes Deep into AR & VR Ads for New 'Saw' Movie 'Jigsaw'
With a new installment of the Saw horror series opening in theaters nationwide this weekend, Lionsgate is betting its ad dollars on immersive advertising to sell tickets.
News: Intel Reveals Vaunt Smartglasses, Normal Looking Glasses That Work with iOS & Android Smartphones
Just a week after news leaked out about Intel's 2018 plans for smartglasses, the company revealed what the device looks like and how it works in a new video (bottom of this page) released on Monday.
News: Unity Labs to Bring Tools to Simplify Mixed Reality Development
In a press event this past week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, Unity Labs, the experimental and forward thinking arm of Unity, announced an upcoming toolset for developers in the augmented, mixed, and virtual reality space called the XR Foundation Toolkit (XRFT).
Hands-On: Hands-On with CNN's Magic Leap News Video App
Magic Leap has done a great job of aggressively releasing new apps, software updates, and major franchise tie-ins. But aside from all the creative and entertainment apps, what's it like to use one of the apps the company hopes you'll use every day?
News: Snapchat Transports Gucci Fans to Trippy Tropical Island for Holiday Promotion
Baby, it's cold outside, but, with some help from Snapchat augmented reality, Gucci is thawing our wintery hearths with a virtual trip to the tropics.
News: Niantic Levels the Pokémon GO Playing Field Between iPhone & Android with ARCore Support
Players of Pokémon GO on Android now have a reason to turn on AR mode with the release of AR+ support via ARCore.
News: Magic Leap One Passes Through FCC Certification, Setting the Stage for Imminent Release
The rite of passage for every tech product, formally known as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certification, has come for the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition.
News: Leap Motion Exec Posts Early Peek at Hand Interaction Project via Meta 2
It's been months since Leap Motion, the hand-tracking interface startup, announced the hiring of Keiichi Matsuda as the VP of design and global creative director based in London. Since then, Matsuda's normally active social media stream has been fairly quiet — until now.
News: DAQRI Deploys Smart Helmet for Navy Gunners
Augmented reality headset maker DAQRI has collaborated with the US Navy to outfit the company's Smart Helmet device for use on battleships.
News: Brenda Freeman Leaves Behind TV & Film to Join Magic Leap as CMO
Today, December 7, it was officially announced that Magic Leap has found their replacement for the recently departed Brian Wallace. Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz has tapped Brenda Freeman, former EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of National Geographic Channel, as their new Chief Marketing Officer.
Hands-On: Kopin's Golden-i Infinity Is What Google Glass Was Supposed to Be, But Comes at a Cheaper Price
If you cover a particular area in tech long enough, you develop certain pet peeves, and one of mine happens to be devices that attempt to keep us wed to the Google Glass style of augmented reality. And while I remain mostly uninterested in such devices, one of these products recently earned my admiration and might work for you, too, under the right circumstances. It's called the Golden-i Infinity.
News: Apple's ARKit 2.0 Intends to Match & Surpass Google's ARCore with Multiplayer & Persistent Content, Says Report
On the one year anniversary of the introduction of ARKit, Apple is planning to reveal major updates its augmented reality toolkit for mobile apps at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California next week.
News: Lenovo Mirage Star Wars AR App Gets 'Last Jedi' Update, Including Porgs & New Lightsaber Duel
Although The Last Jedi hype has mostly passed, there are still a good number of fans out there dueling Sith lords in augmented reality via their new Lenovo Mirage headsets. Now, thanks to an update on Thursday, those aspiring Jedi have a new AR challenge to engage in the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges app.
News: Target Taps YouCam for Augmented Reality Cosmetics Web App
Department store chain Target is the latest retailer to offer an augmented reality cosmetics app for customers to virtually try on lipstick.
News: This Virtual Home Sold for $500K as an NFT, Now the Artist Wants to Move It into Augmented Reality
The NFT space is moving so fast that if you're not already engaged, you've probably already missed several history-making events.
Market Reality: Apple's AR Toolkit Is Slowly Catching on While Google & Snap Invest in More AR Development Tools
The business of enabling the development of augmented reality experiences appears to be as lucrative as AR app development itself.
News: Kohl's Partners With Snapchat AR for Holiday Pop-Up & Black Friday Promotions
All Kohl's wants for Christmas is Snapchat augmented reality. In conjunction with a holiday pop-up hosted in New York City from Nov. 7 through Nov. 10, Snapchat ran a sponsored portal lens available to targeted Snapchat users in the AR carousel. The experience gave users the ability to virtually transport themselves to the pop-up.
News: Slipknot & Guns N' Roses AR Masks on Facebook's AR Camera Let Fans Virtually Wear the Music Experience
While Snapchat augmented reality often embraces pop stars like Drake and Ariana Grande, a couple of bands from the louder side of the music industry have found a home with Facebook.
Market Reality: Magic Leap's Florida Fortress Exposed, Apple's Smartglasses Secret Weapon, & Game of Thrones in AR
They say home is where the heart is. So, the opportunity to view the inner sanctum of Magic Leap is like gaining access to what makes the company tick, just as the fruits of its labor make it into select AT&T stores.
News: Blippar Unveils Positioning System That Bests GPS in Urban Areas
Augmented reality developer Blippar has created a new visual positioning service based on computer vision that is two times more accurate than GPS in urban locales.
Dev Report: New Unity ARKit Plugin Update Allows Developers to Iterate Even Faster
In an early morning blog, Jimmy Alamparambil of the Unity team announced a major new update to their ARKit plugin. Developers now can use Unity and ARKit to create AR experiences and test directly from Unity's editor, without deploying to the device.
News: The Future of Apple Augmented Reality Wearables Through the Lens of Steve Jobs & His Legacy
Today is the 10-year anniversary of the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. To commemorate the occasion, Apple has posted a message and a mini-documentary on its website.
News: DigiLens Vision of Cheaper Smartglasses Becomes Clearer with Crystal Reference Design
If waveguide display maker DigiLens has its way, enterprise businesses and consumers will soon be able to purchase smartglasses for less than $500 — as long as they can supply their own computing and battery power.
News: Facebook Is Making It Easier to Post AR Content in Its News Feed
A recent update to Facebook's News Feed could significantly broaden its reach when it comes to delivering augmented reality content.
News: Snapchat Channels Your Inner Coffee Junkie with Branded Bitmoji from McDonald's
With its new Sponsored Lens debuting on Snapchat on Friday, McDonald's is attempting to give potential customers a virtual pick-me-up.
News: RealMax Returns to CES with Production Model of Qian AR Headset with Industry-Leading Field of View
Last year at CES, RealMax blew away the AR headset competition with a prototype AR headset surpassing 100 degrees field of view.
Market Reality: Vuzix & Vivo Tease New Consumer Smartglasses, Gucci Goes AR, & Nreal Fires Back at Magic Leap
While a viable version of consumer-grade smartglasses has yet to find mainstream success, two more contenders emerged this week, as Vuzix confirmed that a leak of a fashion-forward design is legitmate and Vivo introduced tethered smartglasses designed to pair with its new 5G smartphone.
News: This Is How You Can Join LeBron James & Warner Bros. Space Jam Cartoon Characters in Augmented Reality
The remake of the Warner Bros. classic animation meets live-action movie Space Jam, this time starring LeBron James instead of Michael Jordan, hits theaters today.
News: How Snapchat Quietly Became the First Social AR Platform
Most augmented/mixed reality hardware still exists in the development stage, whether that's one of the more robust headsets or a high-powered smartphone. Most everything else isn't widely used or monetized. Snapchat, however, snuck in under the radar and created the foundation for the first social network to focus on augmented reality.
News: Punch-AR Takes a Jab at Quality Control on Construction Sites
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.
News: Apple's AR Spaces in Updated Clips App Uses iPhone & iPad LiDAR to Give You New AR Video Powers
Ever since the debut of the LiDAR Scanner in the latest batch of Apple's iPhones and iPads, the questions have swirled as to how this would benefit augmented reality interactions.
AR Snapshots: Snapchat's Latest Augmented Reality Lens Turns Celebrities into Lip-Syncing Pop Stars
The Lens Studio community, now made up of more than 200,000 creators, has generated some impressive augmented reality effects in the last few years. Amazingly, the groundbreaking Lenses for Snapchat continue to come, often from the internal AR team at Snap.
News: Visit WandaVision's Reality-Bending Living Room with This Facebook Messenger AR Portal
The new WandaVision series is perhaps the hottest TV show on the Disney Plus streaming service since...well, its own The Mandalorian wrapped up its second season late last year.
News: Rémy Martin Distills Art Through Augmented Reality App to Promote Its Cognac
Another branding team has stepped up to the bar to order a tall glass of augmented reality for its marketing campaign, this time through a mobile app for Rémy Martin VSOP Limited Edition cognac.
Dev Report: Some Light Shed on Magic Leap's Persistent Object Locations Solution but Many Mysteries Remain
With the reveal of Magic Leap's developer documentation last week, many questions have been answered—and several new ones have been raised as well. But since the Magic Leap One (ML1) isn't simply called the "Leap One," these are questions that the company probably has no interest (at least for now) in answering. Understandably, Magic Leap wants to keep some of the "magic" under wraps.
News: Apple's ARKit 3 Casts Next-Level Illusions via Meisai AR App
Now that iOS 13 is in the wild, developers are starting to show off the magical augmented reality powers ARKit 3 can deliver.
News: Wonderscope iPhone App Turns Bedrooms into Stages for Children's Stories in Augmented Reality
Augmented reality content makers often position the technology as a new storytelling medium. And who loves stories more than children?
News: Snapchat Can Turn Your 12-Pack of Labatt Blue Beer into a Virtual NHL Arena
Bud Light being the official beer sponsor of the NFL just makes sense for American football. But what about the NHL, with hockey being the official winter sport of Canada by decree?
News: Reality Trending — Peering into the Present & Future of Augmented Reality in 2018
While many of you were off surfing and lounging on some sandy beach or trying to figure out how to balance work with sky-high summer temperatures, I've been talking to all the companies that make augmented reality what it is today.