Everything Else
Opinion: Why the Nightmare Scenario of Facebook's Quest VR Advertisements Is Actually a Win, & Will Ultimately Boost AR
The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy.
News: Tencent Deepens Its AR Investment Portfolio with $50 Million in Funding for Ultraleap
Over the past decade, China tech giant Tencent has invested in several companies with varying roles in the augmented reality industry.
News: Facebook Develops AI That Can Copy Typefaces & Edit Text in AR
For awhile now, Google has offered the ability to translate text through smartphone cameras via Google Translate and Google Lens, with Apple bringing similar technology to iPhones via Live Text.
News: Apple CEO Tim Cook Teases Future AR Products & Talks Secretive Innovation Process in New Interview
The Apple rumor mill never stops churning and when it comes to augmented reality smartglasses, the chatter has been particularly hot in recent months.
News: Looking Glass Portrait — Unboxing the First Mainstream Holographic Display
Not all Kickstarters are created equal. Some take forever to get their products to supporters, and when the product does arrive (usually much later than promised) it's often very rough around the edges.
AR Snapshots: Snapchat Lens Shows Us What Our Fav Live-Action Movies Would Look Like from Pixar Animation
For its latest augmented reality trick, Snapchat has brought the world an AR Lens that has become a bit of a viral hit on Twitter as users turn themselves and their favorite movie stars into characters out of a Pixar movie.
Market Reality: Apple's New AR Tools, Snap Spectacles Apps, Magic Leap Exec Shake-Up, & Microsoft's Military HoloLens
Over the past few weeks, Google, Snap, and Facebook have all taken their turns to show off their new augmented reality technologies. This week, it was Apple's turn, with new AR features for iOS 15 along with new capabilities for developers.
News: Snap's Spectacles Turned into Immersive AR Dance Teacher via Lens Studio
The debut of the augmented reality version of Snap's Spectacles came with several examples of how the wearable can allow creators to transform the world around them.
News: Facebook's Smartwatch Will Eventually Include CTRL-Labs Tech for Smartglasses Control, Report Says
If you were to summarize the path Snap has taken towards augmented reality smartglasses with a meme template, how it started would be the first-generation Spectacles camera glasses and how it's going would be the next-generation Spectacles with AR capabilities.
News: Apple Pushes ARKit Closer to the AR Cloud with Location Anchors, Expands Face Tracking Support
While Apple introduced new AR features for iOS 15 and Object Capture for Reality Kit 2 during the WWDC 2021 keynote, updates for ARKit were curiously absent in the official presentation.
News: Apple's Object Capture Puts 3D Scanning Market on Notice, but Unity MARS Benefits via New Integration
One of the more exciting augmented reality announcements Apple made during its WWDC keynote on Monday came in the form of Object Capture, a new 3D scanning feature coming to macOS Monterey.
News: Apple Brings 3D Scanning to macOS Monterey with Object Capture
As brands and content makers create more augmented reality experiences, the demand for tools to create 3D content grows in kind.
Market Reality: Facebook Debuts Shared AR for Video Chat, Magic Leap Teams with AMD, & Lego Takes AR to the Theme Park
It's (virtual) developer conference season, and this week was Facebook's turn with F8 Refresh. Like Google and Snap, Facebook had some new AR capabilities to show off.
News: Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg Talks Immersive Remote Video & AR Smartglasses Following Major Reveals from Snap & Google
The last few weeks were fairly busy in the realm of augmented reality and remote meetings developments. Most of that activity was generated by some mammoth announcements from Snap and its Spectacles AR smartglasses, and Google, with its Project Starline experimental holographic video conferencing system.
News: Facebook Focuses on Shared AR Experiences Over Video via Spark AR
After introducing a pair of new Spark AR capabilities last week, Facebook had one more trick up its sleeve to unveil at its virtual F8 Refresh developer conference.
AR Snapshots: Celebrate Pride Month with These Snapchat Augmented Reality Lenses
June is Pride Month, an annual celebration of LGBTQ+ communities in commemoration of the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
Market Reality: Snap Spectacles Early Prototype, Volkswagen Drives into AR, Inside Lego Snapchat, & Instagram Updates AR
We're still basking in the afterglow of the HUGE Snap Partner Summit last week, where Snap made Snapchat a much stronger augmented reality platform while also unveiling the AR smartglasses version of Spectacles. This week, we got a peek at how Spectacles AR started and got our hands on Lenses from Lego and Disney featured during the keynote.
News: Facebook Upgrades Spark AR Platform for Instagram with Segmentation & Marker Tracking Capabilities
Ever since Snapchat rebuffed its acquisition attempts, Facebook has morphed Instagram with features from Snapchat, such as stories, chat, and, of course, augmented reality.
News: Hands-On with the Lego Snapchat Augmented Reality Experience That Lets You Build With Friends Remotely
The world of Lego is timeless primarily because everyone, regardless of age or background, can build a wide variety of amazing things with the simple component blocks from the classic toymaker.
News: Volkswagen Offshoot Cupra Born Electric Vehicle Debuts with Impressive AR Features
The electric vehicle space is where a lot of the most cutting-edge technology is used to push vehicles forward (the best example being Tesla).
News: Snap Team Member Reveals Early Prototype of AR Spectacles, Plus Here's Another Way to Get Your Own Pair
When Snap CEO Evan Spiegel pulled off the surprise debut of the augmented reality version of Spectacles last week, it was one of the biggest moments in the company's history.
News: This Is How You Can Access Disney World's Limited-Time Mickey & Minnie Mouse AR Selfie Lens on Snapchat
Last week, Snap powered through a mountain of important software and (shock!) hardware updates, as well as a few very big business partnerships.
Market Reality: Google Goes Holographic, Snap AR Smartglasses Launch, Facebook Exec Departs, Epic Games vs. Nreal Pt. 2
Google and Snap held their annual conferences this week, and both companies managed to upstage their new AR software features with fantastic new AR hardware.
News: How to Get a Pair of Snap's New Spectacles AR Smartglasses
The tech world was taken by surprise this week with the unexpected unveiling of Snap's augmented reality Spectacles smartglasses.
News: Snap Acquires Wave Guide Maker WaveOptics for $500 Million
The big day for Snap that resulted in the debut of brand new augmented reality Spectacles smartglasses is turning into a big week.
News: Snap Spectacles Finally Evolve into Full AR Smartglasses with Standalone Immersive Superpowers
The biggest win in the race for consumer augmented reality smartglasses to date belongs not to Apple, Facebook, or Google, but Snapchat's parent company, Snap.
News: Snap Now Lets You Build Lego in AR Remotely with Others, Reveals AR Tie-Up with Disney, Plus AR Business Tools
The surging activity in augmented reality in both the business and consumer sectors is being matched with a wealth of updates and partnerships from Snap Inc.
News: Snap Releases Lens Studio 4.0 with 3D Body Mesh & More, Upgrades Scan as Fashion Assistant
Throughout Thursday's virtual Snap Partner Summit, Snapchat's parent company made a profound statement: If you use Snapchat, you're a creator.
AR Snapshots: These Snapchat AR Lenses Let You Use Your Entire Body to Create Visual Masterpieces
Snapchat's first foray into augmented reality started with the selfie camera and face-tracking technology, with the app's AR capabilities expanding from there.
News: Google's Project Starline Promises 3D Video Conferencing Like We've Never Seen Before
During the Tuesday launch of Google I/O, the company's CEO, Sundar Pichai, pulled off a Steve Jobsian "one more thing" move near the end of his keynote address that was simply stunning.
News: DigiLens Forges Reference Design for Smartglasses with 50 Degree Field of View
In the great smartglasses race, component makers, such as those that supply the crucial waveguide displays that make visualization of virtual content possible, have a vested interest in pushing the industry forward in order to ship units.
News: Facebook Reality Labs VP Hugo Barra Abruptly Heads for the Exit
Facebook Reality Labs just experienced its first major executive exit since the pandemic began. Hugo Barra has announced that he's stepping down from his position as vice president of VR at Facebook.
News: Epic Games Restarts Lawsuit vs. Nreal as Settlement Talks Collapse
One fight for augmented reality branding that we thought had been settled has suddenly turned into a full-fledged legal battle—again.
Market Reality: Microsoft's Consumer Smartglasses, Apple Invests in Corning & Niantic Launches Lightship Beta
Sure, Microsoft has mostly marketed its HoloLens headsets towards enterprises and developers, but we learned this week that, like every other tech giant, the company is working on a consumer-grade AR wearable. Speaking of consumer smartglasses, Apple made another strategic investment this week that has implications for Apple's AR future.
News: Microsoft's Alex Kipman Confirms HoloLens Consumer AR Smartglasses Being Developed & Describes How It Can Happen
The story of the HoloLens has been a mix of work and play. But while many developers have devoted time to creating gaming and entertainment apps for the HoloLens 1, with the HoloLens 2, Microsoft has been encouraging everyone to focus more on the enterprise side of things.
News: Microsoft Mixed Reality Developer Shows Off the Full Power of Hand Tracking & Occlusion via the HoloLens 2
The experience of actually using the HoloLens 2 can be difficult to describe to anyone who hasn't had a chance to directly interact with the device in person and be blown away by its immersive capabilities.
News: NBCUniversal Teases Augmented Reality-Powered Shopping via TV
Consumers who haven't already delved into the interactive wonders of augmented reality are about to be pushed into the immersive waters by market forces.
News: The History of Europe Gets Immersive via HoloLens 2 Experience at St. Peter's Church in Belgium
In recent years, the tech innovation space has been dominated by the US and Asia, with Europe weighing in, but still being mostly lauded for its art history and architecture.
News: Niantic Opens Private Beta for AR Cloud Platform Now Called Lightship
Niantic first unveiled its AR cloud back in 2018, using it to enhance the immersive capabilities of its gaming portfolio.
News: Apple $45 Million Corning Investment Shores Up iPhone Display Supply, Opens Up Investment AR Innovation
After awarding $410 million to the company that supplies it with VCSELs and LiDAR sensors, Apple has made another strategic investment into a company that may contribute to future augmented reality hardware innovations.