While the long-awaited HoloLens 2 officially arrived this week, details leaked about another, arguably longer-awaited AR headset, the fabled wearable from Apple, and a previously undisclosed partner assisting the Cupertino-based company with the hardware.
If there is a major blind spot in the AR space in 2019, it's the impact that blockchain technology will eventually have on the software distributed in AR clouds.
While Magic Leap turned heads at the Game Developers Conference with AR experiences at the Unity and Unreal Engine booths, news broke that the company was the winning bidder for ODG's patents.
Mixed reviews of Magic Leap One aside, it would be hard to deny that Magic Leap has had a big year. And the AR unicorn isn't coasting to the finish line, with a number of new apps dropping and prescription frames finally arriving to bring relief to those who wear eyeglasses.
The recent announcement of a $480 million US Army contract awarded to Microsoft over Magic Leap for supplying 100,000 augmented reality headsets shows just a how lucrative the enterprise (and government) sector can be for AR.
While Magic Leap has gained attention for its ability to raise capital, the company (now with an actual product on the market) still faces an uphill climb against the titans of the industry.
Around this time in 2016, the predictions for the next year had reached something of a consensus: 2017 would be the year of augmented reality. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future — nothing much, really. At least not for the first half of the year.
The hunt for the mixed reality use-case that wins over consumers' hearts and creates a critical mass is a problem every developer would love to solve. Not only would they find themselves rich and famous seemingly overnight, but they would also end up making one of the various possible hardware solutions a viable place for other developers to put their time and energy.
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.
As if teasing its own smartglasses weren't enough, augmented reality gaming developer Niantic gave gamers a glimpse of how 5G speeds can revolutionize how they play mobile games in the near future.
Continuing our NR30 series this week, we focused on the leaders of the software development industry that make augmented reality experiences possible. In other news, two of the current leaders in making AR headsets, Microsoft and Magic Leap, are pursuing multiple verticals with their products, as both now appear to be interested in making AR headsets for the military.
When Microsoft unveiled Mesh a couple of weeks ago, the move revealed a major part of Microsoft's next steps toward dominating the augmented reality space, particularly with regard to enterprise customers.
Welcome to the first annual Next Reality 30, our list of people who've made the biggest impact on the augmented reality space in the last 12 months — and what a 12-month roller-coaster ride it's been. Apple introduced ARKit-powered apps last fall, Google launched ARCore for Android soon after, Snapchat began monetizing AR, and the Magic Leap One headset finally came out. These are historic times.
Augmented reality technology is often likened to magic powers, so it is fitting that a new AR experience featuring the Harry Potter franchise uses the newest AR tricks from Facebook and its Spark AR platform.
It may take practice to get to Carnegie Hall, but a new mobile app gives the average iPhone or iPad owner the experience of walking on stage with a live orchestra.
Next to Game of Thrones, Harry Potter is one of the most beloved franchises in entertainment today, and now we have another peek at its dive into augmented reality.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to try to survive The Purge as depicted in the popular movie series? Well, thanks to augmented reality, now you can.
Despite the popularity of Pokémon GO, augmented reality gaming hasn't quite caught on yet. The makers of the popular World of Tanks game aren't taking a shot at Niantic's crown yet, but they are looking at giving spectators a new way to watch the game.
While augmented reality experiences can already appear to be magical, particularly to the uninitiated, one developer is doubling down on its mystical potential for the ever-popular Magic: The Gathering card game.
As if its users weren't already having enough fun with dancing hot dogs and face effects, Snapchat is upping the ante with a new kind of shared augmented reality content.
The augmented reality cloud and multi-user experiences are shaping up to be one of the hotter areas of augmented reality, and now Google is the latest entity to back these emerging branches of AR.
If there's one augmented reality app idea that should have gone up in smoke, it's probably Tokédex, an app that brings cannabis to the world of AR.
The Microsoft HoloLens mixes the digital world with the physical one, allowing you to coexist with holograms of your choosing. But those worlds won't fully blend until we can experience it all together and create for each other. Vuforia could make that possible in the near future.
Facebook announced at its F8 Developer's Conference on April 12th that, in addition to the VR-ready Oculus Rift we have today, it plans to bring Augmented Reality (AR) into the fold of their social machine.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that augmented reality (or, AR for short) will "change everything." But what, exactly, is augmented reality?
Throughout this NR50 series, we have talked about the incredible growth the augmented and mixed reality space has seen in the last year. More devices, software, developers, and use-cases seem to arrive daily. For this growth to have occurred, it took the work of many people, from many different backgrounds and skill sets — and Next Reality wants to recognize them for all that they have done and are doing.
Brands are increasingly adopting augmented reality to promote their products and services, and they have multiple paths for bringing AR experience to their audiences.
If you need to know whether you are really a Hufflepuff or a Gryffindor, then it's time to get yourself an augmented reality sorting hat.
Imagine sitting on your patio, scrolling through your phone's photos, reminiscing about the past. Now imagine being able to see those photos floating in the air, at the exact vantage point from where they were taken a year ago.
Smartglasses are the future of augmented reality, and Samsung is betting on waveguide maker DigiLens to emerge as a leader in the growing AR wearable industry.
It looks like Microsoft will finally make good on its promise to bring Minecraft to augmented reality, as foreshadowed via a HoloLens demo in 2015.
For the release of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, Snapchat and Lionsgate aren't just creating AR experiences to promote the movie, they are giving fans the opportunity to create and share their own AR experiences.
Location services provider Mapbox is expanding the reach of its augmented reality development capabilities to include apps for automobiles as well as smartphone navigation.
Designing and manufacturing waveguides for smartglasses is a complex process, but DigiLens wants us to know that they have a software solution that partially solves that problem.
With barely a whisper of augmented reality during the first day of its developer's conference, Samsung came out swinging on day two with the introduction of its version of the AR cloud and a partnership with Wacom that turns Samsung's S-Pen into an augmented reality magic wand.
After parting ways with Papa John's, the National Football League has drafted Pizza Hut as its official pizza purveyor, and the company has hit the field with an augmented reality game to entertain hungry football fans.
Regal Cinema's augmented reality magazine Moviebill enjoyed a big debut in April and it has its sights set on an even bigger (virtually) outing with its next edition.
Another AR cloud savior has emerged this week in Fantasmo, a startup that wants to turn anyone with a smartphone into a cartographer for spatial maps.
One of the most popular mobile games out there for kids has added an augmented reality mode that brings the titular character into the real world.
A report from app data firm Sensor Tower reveals that more than 13 million ARKit apps have been installed on iPhones and iPads within the first six months since the toolkit launched with iOS 11.