Augmented Reality

The headsets of tomorrow offer some amazing possibilities in both gaming and work, but what we've seen so far only begins to scratch the surface. The US Navy saw the potential to use augmented reality in a helmet to provide divers with an incredible amount of information we ha ...more

Most sandboxes wait for children on a playground or the occasional zen garden raking. This one combines light, sand, and depth cameras to create a completely malleable topographical map you can alter with a brush of your hand. Video: . Gary Glesener, director of the Modeling a ...more

Google has just launched a new revolutionary augmented reality game for Android called Ingress. Their new mobile game centers around the fight for control of the minds of everyone here on Earth. It's a freaking worldwide fight—from your smartphone! While augmented reality in i ...more

As the calendar year (and, for many companies, the fiscal year) comes to a close, it appears 2017 may stand as the new high-water mark for investment in augmented and virtual reality technology. Last month, the AR/VR advisors at Digi-Capital tallied $2.5 billion in investment ...more

The North remembers...that smartglasses are the future! Game of Thrones jokes aside, the smartglasses startup opened its doors, and we visited its Brooklyn store to get our hands the consumer-focused Focals smartglasses. While North is just getting off the ground, Microsoft a ...more

Cited by many listed on this year's NR30 list as the most important event in the last 12 months, last year's release of ARKit catapulted Apple CEO Tim Cook to the top of Next Reality's rankings. This week, we dug deeper by explaining why he's at the top of the list of NR30 Mob ...more

The ability to shift between virtual reality and augmented reality seamlessly on one device is a dream of many AR fanatics, but the execution is usually fairly buggy or underwhelming. That was not the case last week when I got my hands on the Varjo XR-1 Developer Edition head ...more

A week after the L.E.A.P. Conference, our cup of Magic Leap news continues to floweth over, with the company's content chief giving us some insight into the company's strategy, and Twilio sharing what its virtual chat app looks like. Elsewhere, the demand for AR among busines ...more

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. Namely, there's the looming presence of Apple, who 18 months ago didn't even have an ...more

This time last year, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and his company were faced with an erosion of its user base that cratered its stock price. This year, on the strength of Snapchat's AR camera effects, the company has reversed course. And that's why Spiegel tops the NR30, our annual l ...more

It doesn't matter how cool or groundbreaking a particular technology is, if it doesn't offer the promise of big returns on investments, you'll have trouble drawing interest from both Silicon Valley and Wall Street. That's why we're increasingly seeing existing augmented realit ...more

Snapchat is mostly credited as the first AR social network, and, like most social media companies, its revenue model is nested largely within advertising. As such, the company now has a new avenue for branded content. Of course, they are not the only mobile advertising game i ...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

Publicly, things have been pretty quiet over at Meta, the augmented reality headset and software startup based in Silicon Valley. But that doesn't mean that the company doesn't have a few strong opinions about the state of AR in 2018. In a recent TED talk, one of the company' ...more

Is the augmented reality magic fading down in Plantation, Florida? That's the first question some may be asking following a casual revelation over the weekend that Magic Leap, the maker of the Magic Leap One, has assigned much of its patent portfolio over to JP Morgan Chase a ...more

Having already solved for functionality and form factor, Nreal appears poised to pull ahead of its consumer smartglasses competition as the third piece of the puzzle now falls into place. On Thursday, at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2019, the smartglasses maker revealed tha ...more

When you drive along the deceptively sedate streets of Silicon Valley, there are few hints that all those nondescript office parks and low-rise buildings contain the very future of the planet, but they really do. On a recent trip to tech's epicenter, I found that out firsthand ...more

In what's becoming something of a regular occurrence, Magic Leap has yet another internal, unforced error on its hands. Thankfully, this time it's not about legal skirmishes or theft, but a rather unusual break from company protocol that has been quickly swept under the rug. ...more

As the level of data being generated grows exponentially, past the Information Age and into the coming Hyper-Information Age of immersive computing — as resistant as many of us are to the idea — personal data security is becoming a necessary consideration in our everyday lives ...more

Move over, Star Wars. You're not the only Disney property that can play in the Lenovo Mirage AR headset anymore. On Thursday, superhero powerhouse Marvel unveiled Dimension of Heroes, a new mobile app for iOS and Android that, when holstered in a Lenovo Mirage AR headset and ...more

Coming into this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the common sentiment among observers was that this was expected to be the big year for augmented reality. But as the biggest tech conference of the year draws to a close, the reality is that 2018 seems more likely to be ...more

In a stunning end-of-year twist to the Magic Leap versus Nreal legal saga, the China-based startup is now filing a motion against Magic Leap. Documents detailing the motion were filed on Monday with the US Northern District Court of California. Don't Miss: Hands-On with the ...more

Facebook recently hit a snag in its quest to take augmented reality face effects to its millions of users. After a media firestorm over a new plastic surgery filter called "FixMe," provoked by concerns from mental health charities, Facebook has decided to ban plastic surgery ...more

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. This week, Facebook shared some of the progress its Facebook Reality La ...more

Fan favorite Transformer Bumblebee returns to theaters on Friday in a spin-off of the film franchise, so Paramount Pictures is bringing the car-robot back into the homes of fans via augmented reality. On Thursday evening, Snapchat launched a Sponsored World Lens featuring Bum ...more

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 inter ...more

In this series, we are going to get you to the edge of building your own cloud-based, cross-platform augmented reality app for iPhone, Android, HoloLens, and Meta 2, among other devices. Once we get the necessary software installed, we will walk through the process of setting ...more

As we move toward the end of the year, the wheels of the augmented reality space continue to shift in major ways. Facebook is currently facing yet another round of public and governmental scrutiny over its smartglasses product, but we propose a different scenario that might h ...more

When it comes to augmented reality wearables, it's currently an enterprise world. As such, Magic Leap's latest Lumin updates are centered on features that appeal to enterprise customers. And Epson and Spinar are joining forces with a solution for distributed workforces. Mean ...more

Mystery is a tricky thing. Used correctly, it can give onlookers the impression that wondrous and perhaps valuable things are afoot. However, once the veil of suspension of disbelief is removed in any significant way, that same mystery can quickly turn into not just skepticism ...more

It's safe to say that we can call the annual ranking of AR investments a holiday tradition at Next Reality. Following our 2018 and 2017 editions of the biggest AR investments, we've expanded the list to include the top 25 this year. While there are many familiar names at the ...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

Stories are everywhere in social media today, but that wasn't always the case. In 2013, Snapchat introduced the world to these temporary windows into our daily lives. Since then, stories have infiltrated other popular apps. However, to stand out, you can't solely rely on the a ...more

This was a Chicago AR meetup we had where we introduced the concept of using a tablet to view Augmented Reality objects. We used ARSights app for this demonstration. The great thing with this is that there are 10,000's of free models & the ARSights viewer/player is free. It is ...more

Check out this article on the ridiculously cool use of augmented-reality by LEGO. via NOTCOT

One of the most overlooked components of talking about augmented reality and virtual reality is getting people to actually use the hardware and software associated with these platforms. We're so early in the development of immersive computing that we're still dealing with a f ...more

Old school media stalwart Sports Illustrated is billing this year's Swimsuit Issue as the "Most Immersive Experience Ever," and it certainly lives up to that statement, as the magazine has added augmented reality and virtual reality experiences to this year's version via Snapc ...more

While most of Hollywood and its celebrity class are enthralled by virtual reality, a new augmented reality experience featuring some of the music and film world's top talent is preparing for virtual liftoff. Masters of the Sun is a graphic novel that was released this summer ...more

Meta CEO and founder — and Next Reality 50 member —Meron Gribetz unveiled a new operating environment for augmented reality called Meta Workspace for the audience at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California, today. Gribetz demonstrated several features of the ...more

Investors are ready to throw their money at augmented and virtual use cases that demonstrate a business purpose and a return on investment. The two latest examples come in the form of mobile apps for selling cosmetics and a software solution for medical professionals to view ...more

Soon, Pokémon GO allies attacking a raid boss at a gym will be able to do so together in augmented reality. The game's developer, Niantic Labs, announced on Thursday via a blog post that it has acqui-hired Escher Reality, an augmented reality and computer vision developer tha ...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

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. And while Google and Snap made big AR hardware reveals, Facebook did not. However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg did r ...more

At IFA in Berlin today, Sony introduced the latest models of the Xperia line, with new features in tow that should appeal to creators of augmented and virtual reality content. The Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact both carry the Motion-Eye camera that can capture video at 960 frames ...more

There's a general belief that augmented and mixed reality is going tied to enterprise solutions for the foreseeable future, and most developers in the field are focused on business use-cases. Without a dramatic breakthrough in the next couple of years that will likely be the c ...more

At Next Reality, we've been following the Microsoft Hololens because of its enormous potential. Unlike virtual reality, which enshrouds the user in a complete virtual world, augmented reality melds the virtual with what's really there in front of you. And while some of us may ...more

Every other year, Apple comes out with "S" model iPhones that enhance and speed up their main series models from the previous year. This year, however, because of the highly-anticipated 10th anniversary iPhone, aka the iPhone X, Apple has dropped the "S" and moved straight to ...more

Over the past year, two trends have emerged among augmented reality development software: make it easier to create AR content, and give AR apps better environmental understanding with just a smartphone camera. Those two feature sets are about to join forces, as Torch will int ...more

Now that the dust has finally settled on Microsoft's big HoloLens 2 announcement, the company is circling back to offer more granular detail on some aspects of the device we still don't know about. Aside from making some team members accessible for interviews, the company has ...more

While these days it is better known for the cross-platform gaming sensation Fortnite, Epic Games also makes Unreal Engine, one of the top development environments for 3D content and, in turn, augmented reality and virtual reality experiences. As a result, the company has mana ...more

The roster of handsets supporting Google's augmented reality toolkit now includes 46 Android models as well as support for ARKit-compatible iPhones and iPads. The latest devices to support ARCore include the Nokia 6.1 Plus and 7 Plus, Moto G6 and Z3 Play, One Plus 5T and 6, a ...more

In the latest example of life imitating art, IBM has applied for a patent for a video censoring system that looks a lot like the "Arkangel" child monitoring system from the latest collection of modern sci-fi fables from Black Mirror on Netflix. For those who haven't seen the ...more

If you bought your first mobile phone in the early-to-mid-2000s, there's a good chance that it was a Nokia and it had the game Snake preinstalled. While mobile gaming has moved on to bigger things, those who still yearn for simple games with a dose of the future can now play ...more

When Apple introduced ARKit earlier this year, they trotted out IKEA as one of the companies it was working with to build an augmented reality app that lets customers see furniture as it would appear in their home. While the Swedish furniture monger did not make an appearance ...more

The perfect promotion for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu has finally come to fruition as Niantic has added some movie-related perks to Pokémon GO. Starting Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern time and continuing until the same time on May 17, Pokémon GO players taking photos with the enhan ...more

This week, Dr. Sung-Hoon Hong, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, announced at the Virtual Reality Summit in San Diego that not only does Samsung have a new virtual reality headset coming, but that Samsung intends to enter the field of augmented reality, too. In fact, Hong ...more

The powers of the Nreal Light continue to increase incrementally with each passing week. Now, the latest feature added to the device is possibly the most requested feature for anyone who has tried the Nreal Light: hand tracking. Don't Miss: Hands-On with the Nreal Light, Sma ...more

Like gas on an open flame, rumors and whispers have flared up in recent months around hopes of augmented reality smartglasses from Apple. But among all the false leads and unsubstantiated chatter, we finally have a credible report that some sort of Apple AR smartglasses are ac ...more

After testing the waters with a few pop-up stores along the West Coast earlier this year, North is bringing its smartglasses to more cities across the US and Canada. With a presence at Amazon's re:Mars Conference this week in Las Vegas, North's summer tour started this week V ...more

Returning to the spotlight after its debut at last year's CES, augmented reality smartglasses maker Rokid is back with a new update. On Monday, the China-based startup announced Project Aurora at CES in Las Vegas. Rokid describes the new prototype hardware device as functioni ...more