Oculus Rift

Virtual reality technology company Oculus VR announced that it will begin accepting preorders for its long-awaited Oculus Rift headset beginning Wednesday, January 6th, at 8 a.m. Pacific time. The Facebook-owned company hasn't released any pricing details yet, but the blog po ...more

Following the launch of the Magic Leap One earlier this month, the device and the company took a few hits from early reviewers. But it turns out those were just love taps compared to the absolute scorched earth acidic screed penned this weekend by someone well credentialed to ...more

The Oculus Rift is finally shipping to customers in more than 20 countries, and we're getting a good idea of how the device holds up from the initial reviews. You'll see some common threads throughout: along with an impressive virtual reality experience, the device is very com ...more

What happens when a entrepeneur/theme park creator and special effects artist/magician team up? You get a team crazy enough to create the first true virtual reality theme park (sorry, Six Flags). They only have a single experience so far, but it's already taken a giant leap be ...more

A funny thing happened on the way to the release of the virtual reality epic Ready Player One — augmented reality grabbed a major piece of the spotlight. Specifically, Microsoft's HoloLens. It all started last week when the film's director, Steven Spielberg, was quoted in an ...more

The Oculus Rift's virtual experiences become a little less immersive when you're barely moving in a chair with a headset on, playing on a gamepad—but you don't have to accept that reality anymore. Their special Touch controllers, which theoretically let the user explore the V ...more

Mixed reality (MR) feels like an amazing, almost mind-blowing futuristic technology—but only once you've experienced it for yourself. Words, images, and even videos simply cannot describe the experience in full. If you want to really peer into the future and experience MR for ...more

In recent days, I've twice talked about brining the Magic Leap One out into the world with me to test its mobile capabilities. But you may have been wondering how I carried the device with me. Did I just stuff my brand new $2,300, hard to obtain device in a backpack and hit th ...more

We've explained the differences between mixed, virtual, and augmented reality through old-fashioned text and infographics, but in a rapidly-changing environment that leads to even more terms, it's best to think of all these realities in one simple way—as a continuum. Video: . ...more

One the leading game developers for the PlayStation 4 and Oculus Rift platforms, Insomniac Games, is finally releasing its first major augmented reality title: Seedling for the Magic Leap One. Back in November, we gave our impressions of the game after sampling it at the L.E. ...more

When you think about consumer VR headsets, you either imagine a computer-tethered powerhouse like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, or something portable yet limited that utilizes your smartphone like Google Cardboard. Somehow, we haven't seen much in-between, but the Idealens aim ...more

At Next Reality we mostly focus on augmented reality, but that doesn't mean we're not also absolutely obsessed with virtual reality, too. If the thing that's been keeping you from diving into the deep end of VR has been clunky tethered headsets or the expensive but necessary g ...more

Despite the launch of ARKit a year ago, and ARCore this year, a true killer app has not arrived for either platform, that's according to the head honcho for one of the leading development environments for 3D applications. In an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday, Un ...more

Most of us don't get the opportunity to see election coverage first hand, but with virtual reality, we're not as restricted. AltspaceVR has teamed up with NBC News to let you log in on your computer or VR headset and actually take part in the action—just not physically. Video: ...more

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 tough to keep track of what we mean with this terminology, so let' ...more

There's been a whole lot going on at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, from the latest in virtual reality gear to televisions that continue to slim down while producing higher quality images. We've seen so many smart automobiles and appliances that it feels like pretty s ...more

The highly anticipated VR headset hasn't been on the market long, but there's an issue that has some consumers, and even government officials, concerned about the Oculus Rift. You probably guessed the issue surrounds privacy and the extensive, not-so-secret way that it's colle ...more

Magic Leap has been promising to launch a developer conference for years, and now the company is finally making good on that promise. On Wednesday, Magic Leap sent out the official announcement for its first L.E.A.P. conference, which will be held in Los Angeles in October. I ...more

Earnings calls can be a mixed bag. If things are business as usual, the meetings can be, well, boring. Sometimes, however, these reports allow us to extract some juicy gossip. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, proved my point yesterday when, during Alphabet's earnings call, he sa ...more

A new demo has given a hint about what's going to be possible in the world of mixed reality, thanks to Apple's ARKit. The demo comes from Normal VR, a virtual reality developer that is currently working with leading VR platforms such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation ...more

Virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive tether to desktop computers with robust GPUs in order to harness their power. The free-roaming, cordless Microsoft HoloLens forgoes those chains but loses a bit of graphical processing power in the mix. However, a rece ...more

People fear virtual reality will isolate us, but the right experience can prove it does the opposite. AltspaceVR is a virtual world you can utilize to chat with others around the world, but that's not all. You can also play card and board games, a game of laser tag, or a song ...more

If you've ever made graphs and charts, you know it can be a struggle to represent a large amount of data. It's something that just doesn't work very well on a flat surface. In virtual and mixed reality, however, the data can exist all around you. In the below, futurist Jim Re ...more

The team behind Minecraft, the popular open-world game beloved for its freedom to create and build, has teamed up with Oculus to release an official edition that takes you even further into the block-based world using a Samsung Gear VR headset. While the Oculus Rift version it ...more

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. The company is looking to dominate the 'new' reality market, no doubt ...more

E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is the 20th annual trade show for video games and gaming tech. The event takes place on Tuesday, June 10th at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and you can watch a live stream of the event on Twitch. Video: . Some of the most anticipa ...more

Mobile gaming, in case you haven't noticed, is huge. From the astronomical popularity of Candy Crush Saga, to the ease of using old school emulators, we love gaming on our mobile devices. The future is also bright, just take a look at the Oculus Rift, an immersive virtual worl ...more

The mysterious technology product teased via an eccentric TED Talk nearly five years ago has finally been revealed, and it's called the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition. After all of the non-disclosure agreements, furtive comments from CEOs and insiders given early access to th ...more

Black Mirror, Netflix's technology-horror anthology, never fails to provide thought-provoking entertainment centered around emerging and futuristic technologies, and the third season's second episode, "Playtest," delves deep into the worlds of mixed, augmented, and virtual rea ...more

Most of today's mobile augmented reality apps focus on individual experiences, but a new entrant into the space wants to make things a bit more social. Battle tested for years in the realm of virtual reality, vTime is finally bringing its immersive social chat experience into ...more

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. At first glance, the first thing many will point to is the recent history of Facebook and ...more

One could argue that, at least for the moment, software development is more important to the augmented reality experience than hardware. Since a viable augmented reality headset has yet to emerge for the broader, mainstream consumer market, currently, the same devices that mak ...more

You want whales? Ok, you'll get whales! That seems to be the unspoken message from Magic Leap via its latest update in the form of several new experiments posted inside its Helio app. Years ago, Magic Leap stoked its early hype by showing off an image of a massive augmented r ...more

Amazon Web Service's do-it-yourself tool for building augmented reality experiences and VR has graduated from beta and is now available to all interested users. Unveiled at the AWS re:Invent developer conference last year, Amazon Sumerian is billed as software that lets anyon ...more

One of the earliest players in the social virtual reality space, vTime, has just landed $7.6 million in new funding, which the company says is partially earmarked for developing and releasing an augmented reality version of its platform later this year. "Bootstrapped from lau ...more

We already know that the connection between virtual and augmented reality is pretty tight, with tools like Unity making porting some apps between the two platforms fairly frictionless. But there are some things currently going in VR that just don't need to come to the world of ...more

We've seen a number of unique mashups of augmented reality with other bleeding edge technologies, but somehow it took until 2018 for someone to come up with a now obvious complement to AR: 3D printing. Cornell information science doctoral student Huaishu Peng has developed an ...more

During Google Developer Days, taking place now at the ICE Congress Center in Krakow, Poland, an introductory session on ARCore provides some insights on how the platform operates. The presentation by Googler Tom Slater includes an overview on the three pillars by which ARCore ...more

Computer vision technology maker uSens, Inc. has unveiled uSens Fingo, a camera module that enables tracking of hand and head movements for PC-based, mobile augmented, and virtual reality platforms. With an embedded dual-lens camera, uSens Fingo attains accurate inside-out 6D ...more

This morning, in an early morning session at GDC 2017, Brandon Bray, a senior program manager lead at Microsoft, revealed a mixed reality headset made in collaboration with Acer—a different headset than the one we saw from Acer at CES 2017 earlier this year. Also at the event, ...more

A few days before Christmas last year, we saw the first glimpse of HoloSuit, a new motion controller by startup Kaaya Tech. This full-body motion controller is designed as a tracksuit with sensors that can be used to control devices such as a computer or Microsoft HoloLens, an ...more

Most popular virtual reality headsets, like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, require a tethered connection to the computer and that imposes some obvious restrictions on how much we can move in our space. We'd all prefer a simpler, untethered option, and Intel wants to provide jus ...more

Since its purchase by Microsoft in 2014, Minecraft has regularly been pushed to new platforms such as Windows 10, Wii U, and Fire TV. In that spirit, Microsoft-owned Mojang has been developing virtual- and augmented-reality versions of the blocky sandbox game. Recently, Oculu ...more

If you've seen, heard, or even tried the latest virtual reality headsets, you've probably heard about something called "room scale." It's why the HTC Vive suddenly usurped the reign of the Oculus Rift while no one was looking, and it's exactly where Oculus hopes to catch up. H ...more

Describing how and why the HoloLens 2 is so much better than the original is helpful, but seeing it is even better. Back in February, I had a chance to test the HoloLens 2 for a couple of extended periods, and I was very impressed. But I didn't have much in the way of first-p ...more

Now that we've had a few days to recover from the VR geek versus augmented reality nerd battle between Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz, we can get back to taking a closer look at the Magic Leap One. This time, we take a very brief dip into the ...more

Microsoft is adding another important piece to its growing immersive computing arsenal by putting its newest Mixed Reality Capture Studio in the center of the movie business: Hollywood. Following the Mixed Reality Capture Studios in Redmond, Washington, San Francisco, and Lon ...more

Virtual reality headsets aren't new, but they may be something you or someone on your holiday shopping list hasn't experienced yet. If you're going to dive into the world of smartphone-based virtual reality, the best time to do it is during Black Friday when all the good sales ...more

With a new installment of the Saw horror series opening in theaters nationwide this weekend, Lionsgate is betting its ad dollars on immersive advertising to sell tickets. Using Vertebrae's recently-launched AR mobile web ad platform, the ads for Jigsaw will be served as displ ...more

Verto Studio 3D is a 3D modeling package that has been in the works for a while now by Michael Farrell, the owner of Verto Studio LLC. Farrell has been working toward bridging the gap between XR 3D modeling and what we have become accustomed to with desktop 3D modeling package ...more

What does our future hold when augmented and mixed reality finally enter the mainstream? As developers, we are always looking for the ultimate solutions to the problems our users see. Welcome the innovative minds of DataMesh Consulting and their impressive HoloLens interior de ...more

Most of us work with a single monitor, but even with one or two extras, they still offer a rather confined workspace. Virtual reality, however, doesn't have such boundaries. As a result, VR headsets can work as excellent productivity tools. Windows can't just adapt on its own, ...more

Google I/O is right around the corner, and everyone's expecting new virtual and augmented reality news. Here's what to expect from this week's announcements. Google Cardboard Will Evolve into Android VR Given the power of upcoming virtual reality headsets like Facebook's Ocu ...more

It's confession time. Through a couple of sources, I managed to get an early look at the HoloLens 2. But I was sworn to secrecy, and I take my tech oaths seriously (shame on you, leakers). But now that it's out in the wild, we can finally talk about how the HoloLens 2 looks c ...more

With would-be unicorns Magic Leap and Niantic among its investments, Google is an active investor in augmented reality technology. This week, the search giant experienced both ends of the investment cycle, with an exit via Lyft's acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, and a funding ...more

Last week, Twilio showed off how avatar-based chat communications will work on the Magic Leap One, and now a new startup has unveiled yet another way that augmented reality telepresence and remote collaboration can take place on the device. Emerging from stealth on Wednesday, ...more

It wasn't Christmas, but for Amazon Prime members, it was darn close: Amazon Prime Day, one of the biggest shopping days of the year, came and went earlier this week. Unfortunately, there weren't many Prime Day-specific deals to be had for augmented reality fans, but that does ...more

Within the coming months, software startup Neurable plans to introduce the next paradigm in virtual and augmented reality: the brain–computer interface (BCI). A BCI interprets brain signals so that devices can understand user intention from predefined selections. Relying on s ...more

Augmented, mixed, and virtual reality are all a little bit different, but as many expect—including Metavision—the continuum of our next realities will converge and give us one head-mounted display (HMD) platform that can do it all. If Vrvana, a Canadian company building AR and ...more

The future of augmented and mixed reality offers many possibilities, mostly because we're still figuring out everything it can do. While Meta is open to exploration, they've spent a lot of time thinking about what the future of this technology will be. We spoke to Ryan Pampli ...more