News and Updates from Next Reality: Page 6

To kick off 2021, the Apple rumor mill is spinning yet again. This time a familiar item is on the menu: an augmented reality device.

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.

Just because 2020 has been rough for most of the planet, there's no reason you can't enjoy a bit of holiday cheer as you prepare to say goodbye to this year using the power of augmented reality.

In response to Sony unveiling its own holographic display back in October, Looking Glass Factory CEO Shawn Frayne quickly penned a letter welcoming the electronics mainstay to the field, with a post-script teasing the reveal of their own for December of 2020.

The economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt in practically every business sector. Now, as we look back at the top augmented reality investments of 2020, the AR industry has been no exception.

Help me, George Clooney. You're my only hope. If that mash-up of cultural references doesn't make sense, it will momentarily.

You won't have to ask Santa for holiday-themed augmented reality experiences, because practically any social and shopping app that offers AR effects has them available now.

Google, you have something that I want. You may think you have some idea of what you are in possession of, but you do not. In a few moments, it will be mine...and it can be yours, too, dear readers.

The year 2020 was a pivotal span of time during which the word "virtual" took on a brand new meaning. Instead of referring to VR or augmented reality, the term was hijacked to describe meeting across long distances through a variety of software tools, most often through video.

The virtual collaboration tool known as Spatial has consistently been one of our favorites due to its ability to leverage high-end augmented reality headsets to more easily facilitate remote meetings.

We're still awaiting the arrival of consumer-grade AR smartglasses from the likes of Apple and Facebook. But that doesn't mean there aren't AR products out there to try this holiday season.

At the opening of its virtual Lens Fest, taking place Dec. 8-10 and open to the public, Snap is furthering its facilitation of AR development with new tools for Lens Studio version 3.3 and a planned investment into its AR creator community.

Sure, you could leave a random monolith in Utah and get some notoriety for your street art. Or, you can let others put your art anywhere they'd like with augmented reality so they can appreciate it where they are.

Apple no longer has an exclusive province to LiDAR for the purposes of augmented reality.

The movie theater business is hurting due to the pandemic, but that hurdle is actually the perfect set of circumstances for movie studios to lean hard into augmented reality marketing.

In the realm of social media, all roads lead to one destination: cracking the code of continuous partial attention dopamine hits. We learned this back in the days of Vine, before Twitter foolishly killed it. And I pointed my lens at the emerging trend back in 2016 when I highlighted Musical.ly for Mashable, just before it was snapped up by China's Bytedance for $1 billion and merged into what is now TikTok.

With the new season of The Mandalorian underway, Google has launched a new AR app that enables some Star Wars fans to connect with virtual characters in between new episodes.

In this year of everything going virtual and remote, it makes even more sense now that Hollywood is leaning heavily on augmented reality. In this case, it's HBO using AR to promote its highly-acclaimed original programming.

When Treasury Wine Estates released 19 Crimes Snoop Cali Red this summer, named for its new partner in wine, rapper Snoop Dogg, it already came with the brand's signature AR-enhanced label.

Amazon has joined the ranks of film and TV studios using the power of augmented reality to engage fans looking to go behind passive screen viewing.

One of China's largest smartphone makers, Oppo, just took the wraps off its new design for augmented reality smartglasses called AR Glass 2021.

The true crime genre has long been popular on television and more recently on podcasts with shows like Serial.

Last year this guy made his own smartwatch from scratch, so in 2020, naturally, he decided to give making smartglasses a try. And it worked!

What was edge automobile technology just a few years ago is now clearly mainstream, as Cadillac just demonstrated via its new 2021 Escalade.

Just as predicted (but perhaps with less fanfare than usual), Apple has made the move of adding a depth sensor to the rear camera of its latest edition of the iPad Pro.

With many office workers in the US being asked to work from home if their job allows, Magic Leap's customary updates for the Lumin OS and Lumin SDK brings some help to keep distributed workforces connected.

The rumors have been circulating for months, but now there's a source attached to the notion that Magic Leap is looking to sell itself off after a rough couple of years following the launch of its Magic Leap 1 augmented reality device.

The still-unfolding story of China's Nreal augmented reality startup continues to develop, with each turn uncovering another unexpected wrinkle.

The worldwide health crisis around the coronavirus has gripped the live events industry, particularly in the tech sector, with the cancellations of Mobile World Congress, the Game Developers Conference, Facebook's F8, Google I/O and now South by Southwest.

As first reported by Next Reality last year, game developer Preloaded, in partnership with BBC Studios, has finally launched BBC Earth - Micro Kingdoms: Senses.

Computer vision is a key component in enabling augmented reality experiences, but now it can help give sight to the blind as well. In this case, that assistance comes from Envision, developers of mobile apps for iOS and Android that use optical character recognition (OCR) and object detection to provide an audio description of the user's surroundings.

The results of Microsoft's $480 million contract with the US Army are on display and users continue to test the suped-up version of the HoloLens 2.

Alongside Sesame Street, the Dr. Seuss universe has been a constant presence in the formative years of several generations of children in the US.

The entire wireless industry is working overtime to convince the world that 5G, and the higher prices associated with the faster speeds it affords, will not only be worth it but will deliver never-before-seen wonders. But few companies have produced such a stunningly well-done sales job as Three, one of the leading wireless giants in the UK.

Though Microsoft has had trouble keeping up with the demand for HoloLens 2, the company has been able to supply modified headsets to the US Army.

While the rest of the world is scrambling to figure out how to adopt augmented reality and VR tools for remote meetings, one company is building its war chest to serve the growing space of corporate clients who need this kind of immersive computing training.

Amid the coronavirus chaos, two companies at the forefront of augmented reality technology took starkly different approaches to their upcoming developers conferences, as Facebook has canceled its annual F8 conference and Magic Leap plans to invite a limited number of attendees to its Florida headquarters for LEAP Developer Days.

As a native of Alabama, Apple CEO Tim Cook has a special place in his heart for the state. He also empathizes with the struggles that African-Americans have historically faced in the state, particularly during the 1950s and '60s civil rights era.

Some of the oldest art on Earth was created 36,000 years ago on the walls of the Chauvet Cave in France. However, these days, physical access to the cave is restricted in order to preserve the site.

Facebook has announced the cancelation of its annual F8 developer conference, citing concerns around the developing coronavirus health crisis.