HoloMaps, an application by Seattle-based Taqtile, is available for free on the Windows Store. Taqtile, whose Vice President of Product Management was Microsoft's former Director of Business Development, is one of the few partners currently in the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Program. This interactive 3D map they have created, powered by Bing, offers more than just a top-down view of the world on the HoloLens.
On Friday, the Tokyo Olympics finally kicked off after massive delays and complications due to the pandemic.
One thing that I got more and more excited about as we got closer and closer to the Microsoft Build 2017 developers conference was finally learning about the new Acer Windows Mixed Reality head-mounted displays (HMD). Brandon Bray, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft, had teased us a few weeks earlier at the Vision Summit event in Los Angeles, California, and said there would be a lot more information at Build. Fortunately for us, he was right.
Several technologies seek to change the way we perceive our reality, whether that involves entering a virtual world, augmenting an existing one in a realistic and interactive way, or somewhere in-between.
It's time to make some more room at the augmented reality cosmetics counter. This week, social media giant Pinterest unveiled "Try On," a virtual make-up visualization tool running on its Lens visual search tool.
When it comes to the athletic footwear retail game, it's just not enough to just sell shoes anymore.
Who's ready to let future Facebook augmented reality smartglasses read their brain? Well, ready or not, the tech giant is making progress in the area of brain control interfaces (BCI) by funding research.
While Toyota ranks as the leading automotive brand in the world, the company is a follower when it comes to augmented reality.
Although all signs points to Microsoft releasing a new HoloLens in the coming days, the company is nevertheless looking to distribute its augmented reality apps to other operating systems.
A Series B round of funding, totaling $30 million, will enable Helsinki-based startup Varjo to launch its industrial-grade augmented and virtual reality headset capable of "human-eye resolution" before the end of the year.
As it prepares to ship its first product by the end of the summer, Magic Leap has managed to impress yet another high-profile investor in telecommunications giant AT&T.
In the arms race between ARKit and ARCore, Google scored a big win with the announcement of its Cloud Anchors shared AR experiences platform at Google I/O on Tuesday.
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.
Now that we've had a chance to jump into the Lumin SDK documentation at Magic Leap's Creator Portal, we now have much more detail about how the device will function and utilize software than any single piece of content released by Magic Leap to date.
Here are a couple of quick bits, and also a little bit of a teaser. If you know of my old YouTube channel and are a developer, you may be aware of the "Scale and Rotation System" tutorial series I did. I then started working for Next Reality and never finished it.
A pair of organizations recognized companies working in augmented reality for their innovative technologies over the past week. Meanwhile, another company used augmented reality for a sector that is overdue for a technology makeover, while another company has developed new camera modules that could usher in the next evolution of mobile AR.
This week's Brief Reality is led by a pair of stories with an eye to the future of the augmented reality industry, first in terms of standards for the industry, then with regards to its future applications in the automotive realm. Finally, one company looks to boost its future sales with an executive hire.
In this Tuesday's Brief Reality report, there's a trio of stories from the healthcare world where augmented reality is helping out with surgical microscopes, asthma treatment, and other diagnostic and treatment tools. There's also something for all of you AR/VR storytellers out there.
Listen up ladies, there's no need to go to Sephora and model a hundred different shades of lipstick anymore. Now with Virtual Artist, Sephora's award-winning app, for iOS and Android, you can virtually test thousands of shades of single and palette eyeshadows, lip colors, and even false eyelash styles from their new augmented reality-based feature.
After what appeared to be an issue with the Windows Store for HoloLens not showing many newer applications, including one that I had released over a month ago, Microsoft finally squashed the bug. So, at first glance, it would seem as if there were lots of new HoloLens projects that just appeared in the store, even though they've likely been hiding out there for a while. HoloTerrain is one of those apps.
It's been almost two years since Apple added the TrueDepth depth-sensing camera of the iPhone X for Face ID and Animojis, but now Google is ready to upgrade the front-facing camera on its Pixel series.
In an effort to raise awareness regarding the impact of emissions on the environment, Snap has partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme to use augmented reality to show how much ocean levels will rise over the next 80 years.
New images reveal that Microsoft is already well underway in fulfilling its $480 million contract to provide augmented reality headsets to the US Army.
On Monday, Apple unveiled its Apple Card, the company's boldest move yet toward becoming a truly mainstream mobile payments company. And the product has vast implications for our augmented reality future, some of which may not be immediately obvious to many.
The last few months have delivered some great new Magic Leap releases, but that doesn't mean the development team is resting on its laurels when it comes to the platform itself.
After weathering an executive departure and reports of a failed sale to Apple, Leap Motion is getting back to the business of pushing the envelope for augmented reality development and interaction.
New documents reveal that electric car company Tesla has filed a surprising new patent that has nothing to do with batteries or autonomous driving and everything to do with augmented reality.
With HoloLens and its enterprise-focused software offerings, Microsoft continues to make an impression on companies looking to adopt augmented reality, with Toyota Motor Corporation among the latest.
The latest business move by Magic Leap could result in a significant boost to its spatial computing platform's performance and headset design.
Leading augmented reality headset makers Microsoft and Magic Leap are among the companies now vying for a military contract for battlefield heads-up displays.
San Francisco-based 6D.ai is preparing to launch a beta of its AR cloud platform that's capable of constructing a real-time dense mesh from crowdsourced data for use in 3D mapping and multi-user AR experiences.
Investors are ready to throw their money at augmented and virtual use cases that demonstrate a business purpose and a return on investment.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Niantic must be blushing constantly, as numerous copies of Pokémon GO have spawned over the past year or so, seeking to capture the same success, often adding the lure of tangible prizes from brand partnerships.
It seems nowadays there's no limit to what type of companies are looking to invest in augmented reality. Given both the positive outlook on the future of AR, and its reported benefits for efficiency in employees, this makes sense. Safran, an international corporation with three main sectors—aerospace, defense, and security—is one such company taking the plunge into incorporating AR in their business.
Welcome to the maiden voyage of our new Market Reality column. Each Friday, NextReality will give you a roundup of news briefs from the financial end of the augmented and mixed reality industry. We'll cover funding news, market analysis, and more.
Every day the young world of mixed reality is creating new ways for people to work with with computers. We are looking for, and finding, new ways for these head-worn computers to understand what we tell them. Sometimes it is with our hands, sometimes it is where we turn our head, sometimes it is what we say. In the case highlighted below, it's where we walk.
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.
In recent years, wave after wave of technological advancement has led us down roads that are beginning to look more and more like science fiction stories. In their efforts to bring us from science fiction to science fact, Microsoft Research showed us a new communication medium called Holoportation earlier this year—and now they have found a way to make this highly complex holographic system far more mobile.
We're already glimpsing the future when we look at mixed reality through a headset, but is the real evolution of this technology something that will exist as part of our bodies? As intense as that may sound, TechCrunch's Jay Donovan offers compelling reasons why it's not such a crazy idea:
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.
