Next Reality: Page 6

Rumors around Apple's not-so-secret development of an AR/VR headset have been prevalent throughout the young year, but the latest round of reports move speculation of the device into a clearer view.

Ever since the US Army awarded Microsoft's HoloLens a $480 million contract, the battle for enterprise augmented reality has heated up in earnest.

As Apple, Google, Snap, and Facebook wrestle for positioning to lure developers and creators to build augmented reality experiences for their respective tools, Facebook is looking at a learning approach for its Spark AR platform.

The year 2021 is already promising to yield a number of major shifts in the augmented reality landscape, and Snap is signaling that it has every intention of being an aggressive part of that narrative.

Ever since China's Nreal unveiled its Light smartglasses at CES two years ago, an army of look-alikes have emerged from the Asian nation.

The United States is poised to begin a new political era this week, but due to recent events in Washington, D.C., as well as the ongoing pandemic, the traditional inauguration crowds are absent.

The focus on augmented reality over at Apple is, so far, restricted to the iPhone and the iPad. But if some of the most reliable analysts in the business are to be believed, we'll probably see some kind of AR or VR wearable from the company later this year.

The past year has revealed a gaping hole of opportunity in the world of business called virtual meetings. Some existing players like Zoom hopped on that opportunity, while others like Skype seemed stuck on the sidelines, and Google Meet just managed to catch up in time to snag some of the shift in remote work.

Most iPhones are more than capable of shooting crispy, high-quality video, perfect for any TikTok account to use. But if you're serious about the platform, especially in the long-run, you don't want just any iPhone. Instead, you'll want to pick up an iPhone 12 Pro or 12 Pro Max.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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