Look Around in Apple Maps gives you a high-resolution 3D view of roads, buildings, and other imagery in an interactive 360-degree layout. We haven't had anything like this in Apple Maps since iOS 5 when Google's Street View was incorporated. Now, in iOS 13, seven years later, ...more
While the long awaited HoloLens sequel is scheduled to arrive later this year, Apple may force Microsoft to share the AR wearables spotlight, if reports of the company's first entry into smartglasses territory end up coming to fruition. In the meantime, Microsoft's HoloLens 2 ...more
The era of smartglasses designed for consumers has officially begun, as shipments of North Focals began arriving at its stores this week. And the company now has plans to expand its retail footprint. Meanwhile, a new player is emerging in the 3D content creation market, curre ...more
Automotive augmented reality company WayRay has set its destination for a $1 billion valuation with an estimated time of arrival of 2019, and it has just passed a major milestone towards that goal. On Tuesday, the company announced that it has closed an $80 million Series C r ...more
Traditional media institution The New York Times continues to break new ground in its augmented reality news coverage, this time with a 3D volumetric capture of model Ashley Graham. The feature, part of the publication's coverage of New York Fashion Week, serves to shine a li ...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
The addition of a new research mode for Microsoft HoloLens will enable researchers and developers to tap into a wider range of data collected by the device's sensors. Available in the Windows 10 RS4 update for HoloLens, application code in Research Mode can access computer vi ...more
Not content to just be a provider of rugged smartglasses for enterprise users, DAQRI has made the jump into the AR software side of the industry with its new Worksense productivity suite. With Worksense, DAQRI provides five apps that offer functionality typically seen in ente ...more
Stop me if you've heard this one before: scan an image with your iPhone's camera and augmented reality content shows up. This idea probably has you thinking about Snapchat and its Snapcodes. Or maybe you're thinking of Blippar, Zappar, or countless other marker-based AR exper ...more
While the mainstream consumer market waits for cool augmented glasses to arrive from Magic Leap, or maybe even Snap Inc. (Spectacles 2.0??), AR headset maker DAQRI and its business customers are finding new, money-saving and time-saving use cases for the technology today. A r ...more
Just as the modern travel experience has improved thanks to the internet, Airbnb wants to make your stay in a stranger's home easier by way of augmented and virtual reality. On Monday, the company revealed that it's working on augmented reality features that, in the future, m ...more
The HoloLens is a natural medium for 3D data visualization, which offers a far more ideal approach over 2D screens to managing multiple resources simultaneously and grasping the bigger picture. We've already seen how management is using holograms to oversee cities, firefighter ...more
The limitless applications of 3D data visualization will enable a more efficient approach to many of life's problems. Each day, developers exploring this technology are finding new ways to solve these problems in mixed reality; 3D modeling, easier house management, spinal surg ...more
A few days ago, I pulled up the Windows Store on my HoloLens and saw a few new applications. One that caught my attention was Oriental Museum, which lets you explore China's Forbidden City, and the other one is very similar free demo app called Secrets of Ancient Egypt by Link ...more
For those of you still waiting for the new iPhone 5, you may be a little annoyed when you start using the new Maps application. If you're one of the many Apple users that has already updated your current iPhone to iOS 6, then you're probably already missing Google Maps. While ...more
Anyone who has been within a block of any wireless brick and mortar store or tech conference in the last couple of years has no doubt seen banners, posters, and videos promoting 5G high-speed wireless services on the way. The last time I can remember a technology being so hyp ...more
The dream of Google Glass lives on via North's stylish and normal-looking smartglasses that bring text messages and navigation prompts into the user's field of view and Amazon Alexa integration for voice-activated assistance. After the company formerly known as Thalmic Labs t ...more
A group of researchers from Stanford University and Princeton University has put together the largest RGB-D video dataset to date with over 1,500 scans of over 700 different locations across the world, for a total of 2.5 million views. This dataset, called ScanNet, has been s ...more
3D Touch is a new feature on the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus that's reinventing the way we interact with our smartphones. With just a little bit of added pressure when tapping on the display, you can perform Quick Actions from an app's home screen icon, "Peek" at emails, stories, an ...more
The newer Graph Search in Facebook can help you find friends in specific cities, photos of a particular subject, restaurants that your friends liked, and a whole lot more. One thing it can't help you with just yet is searching public posts on Facebook, which you could do in th ...more
With the global COVID-19 pandemic preventing Pokémon GO players from venturing into the real world, developer Niantic has adapted the game for trainers to play in a socially-distanced manner. Likewise, with the annual Pokémon GO Fest, typically an exclusive gathering of playe ...more
The Unity 3D engine is not only responsible for facilitating the creation of 60% of AR and VR content but it also plays a significant role in producing the immersive stories that increasingly push the boundaries of cinema. Some of these daring new immersive works will now be ...more
After establishing itself as a leader among media companies in augmented reality in journalism over the course of 2018, The New York Times pulled back from the technology this year. But this week, the media giant finally returned to the AR space to produce a story on air poll ...more
Wearables startup North has made a smart move to get its Focals smartglasses into the hands of more consumers. On Wednesday, the company launched a new Focals Showroom iOS app that leverages the TrueDepth FaceID camera on iPhone X, XR, XS, XS Max, 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max s ...more
Although next week will mark the late David Bowie's 72nd birthday, his fans and admirers are the ones receiving a gift in the form of an augmented reality app that explores the artist's career Available for $7.99 on the App Store and Google Play on January 8, "David Bowie Is" ...more
The game wizards at Insomniac take pride in diving deep when it comes to world-building, and the same is true for the studio's latest title for Magic Leap One called Seedling. Revealed on Wednesday at the L.E.A.P. conference in Los Angeles, the Magic Leap One-based title is l ...more
If you subscribe to notifications for Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz's Twitter feed, you'd think everyone in the world already has a Magic Leap One. Alas, that is not the case, but those not within the geographic areas of Magic Leap's LiftOff service now have a loophole through w ...more
Computer vision company Blippar has already dabbled with outdoor AR navigation, but now it wants to make it easier for people to make their way through indoor spaces with augmented reality. On Thursday, the company introduced its Indoor Visual Positioning platform for AR navi ...more
The shifting sands of immersive computing, currently fluctuating between augmented reality and virtual reality, can be hard to navigate if you're only versed in one of the platforms. But a new series of videos from Leap Motion paints a picture of a near future world in which A ...more
The availability of space for filming immersive content has just gotten bigger with the launch of Innovation Studios by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The 7,000 square-foot facility on the Sony Pictures Studios lot will house Sony Corporation's research and development efforts ...more
For those who thought the action in Pokémon Go was a bit too pedestrian, Father.io wants to recruit you for a multi-player, first-person shooter that unfolds on the streets of your own city. Through a mobile app, available now on the App Store and Google Play, and a pocket-si ...more
A Russian augmented reality startup wants the next frontier in real estate to be augmented reality estate. Arcona, a blockchain-based augmented reality platform proposed by Piligrim XXI, maps out a grid of "Digital Land" over real locations across the world where digital cont ...more
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 ...more
It's a common and unfortunate myth that you need to work in web or app development if you have a knack for coding and design. In fact, more and more development pros are entering the exciting and increasingly lucrative world of game design, thanks to a growing demand for strat ...more
The Pixel 4 isn't for everyone, but it does have its appeal in several specific use cases. Thanks to Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms, the fitness industry and smartphone world are now intertwined like never before, and it appears Google's aware of this. W ...more
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. On the development f ...more
Over the past year, Magic Leap has teased its cross-platform vision of the AR cloud, which it dubs the Magicverse. While the company shared a timeline for its debut next year, it also served up new developer tools for the present. Facebook is also looking to the future of aug ...more
In recent weeks we've talked about the growing trend of smartglasses makers moving the brains of their devices to smartphones, and now a veteran of the space has joined that movement. On Wednesday, Epson revealed the Moverio BT-30C, the company's first truly affordable smartg ...more
While Microsoft dominated the augmented reality news at this year's Mobile World Congress, a small AR startup we've covered in the past arrived in Barcelona, Spain, to unveil the next phase of its mission. This week, China-based Nreal made the potential mass adoption of its N ...more
When driving, you can get directions hands-free by asking Siri. You can also make general map searches, show a location's details, call a query's phone number, and view traffic details. However, Siri defaults to Apple Maps for all those. If you prefer Google Maps, Waze, or ano ...more
All of the the tech industry giants, including Apple, Facebook, and Google, are working on new smartglasses and/or AR headsets, but this week, Google took a major step forward with gesture recognition technology that could make its way into AR wearables, posing a threat to Lea ...more
On Tuesday, the smartglasses startup known as North finally took the wraps off its Focals product, but in a very unique way: The team simply opened a couple of stores and invited the public in. The flagship store is located in the quiet, upscale confines of Cobble Hill, Brook ...more
So while it is the weekend of San Diego Comic-Con, and it should not be a complete surprise — without a word of warning hitting my feed — the trailer for the upcoming film, Ready Player One was released today. And wow it looks amazing. So, you have no idea what I am talking a ...more
There's a whole world of wallpapers out there. Apple always includes a selection of stock wallpapers, some unique to every iPhone model you have. Of course, sometimes, stock wallpapers don't cut it. Sometimes, you want to add your own style to your home screen and lock screen. ...more
If you missed out on Black Friday this year, you've got a second chance at saving some big bucks on apps, mobile devices, HDTVs, and other tech. See below for all of the hot Cyber Monday deals from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other online retailers. This list will be ...more
While Apple introduced new AR features for iOS 15 and Object Capture for Reality Kit 2 during the WWDC 2021 keynote, updates for ARKit were curiously absent in the official presentation. That doesn't mean there isn't anything new coming to Apple's toolkit for mobile AR apps, ...more
Tony Parisi, the global head of VR/AR at Unity Technologies, has been passionately working with virtual and immersive spaces for a long time. And while the internet world we live in now is very different than when Parisi was co-authoring VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language ...more
After a postponement of the Summer Olympics for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tokyo is set to host the games this summer, despite a surge in cases in the city. Nonetheless, the games seem set to go on, and USA Today has published two AR experiences highlighting two new ...more
This week, Apple unveiled its own version of Google Lens in the form of Live Text. In response, Google just hit back with a new feature for its visual search tool called Places, a new search category that can recognize landmarks and return information on them within the camer ...more
Last year this guy made his own smartwatch from scratch, so in 2020, naturally, he decided to give making smartglasses a try. And it worked! Nashville, Tennessee-based electrical engineer Sam March is the kind of DIY guy we love. He realized he had a problem he wanted to solv ...more
This week, developer Niantic began rolling out a new feature called AR Mapping to Pokémon GO that has bigger implications on the realism of augmented reality in mobile gaming and beyond. AR Mapping is a Field Research task type that players unlock by spinning PokéStops that c ...more
Indian startup Dimension NXG is launching augmented reality headsets into India's consumer market with a bold idea: focusing on immersive computing in education on the high-end. The plan is to give a new kind of AR headset to schoolchildren in remote Indian villages, starting ...more
If you like the "Street View" feature in Google Maps, you'll love "Look Around" in iOS 13's Apple Maps. Overall, Look Around has more details than Street View and the animations are super smooth as you navigate down streets and pedestrian areas. While Look Around isn't availab ...more
When I first found out about Nreal, back in the spring of 2018, the most interesting thing about the company's story was the founder's background. Chi Xu, the CEO and founder of Nreal, previously worked at Magic Leap as a software engineer. Earlier this year, when I met Xu a ...more
I've had a few days to live with the Magic Leap One, and it's time to finally weigh in with some thoughts as someone who has been tracking this company from the beginning, for almost five years now. Let's get right to the meat of the matter: Magic Leap One is not a flop. Not ...more
There are many impressive features in the new iOS 11 for iPhones, and the Maps app got a lot of love from Apple. This means it's finally about time you stop relying on Google Maps for all of your navigation needs, since Apple Maps is not only more accurate than it used to be, ...more
While its direct-selling model echoes brands like Avon and Tupperware, Indonesia's MindStores gives the approach a modern twist—with augmented reality. Recognized as the first partnership store network to use augmented and virtual reality, MindStores equips its store owners w ...more
"It just ticked me off," he said. In March 2011, Neil Singh paid $50 to back the Hanfree iPad stand on Kickstarter. The project was funded at $35,000, but production stalled, and the delivery estimates kept getting pushed back. Eventually, the project's creator, Seth Quest, s ...more
When the Google Maps web app got a massive redesign earlier this year, I was pretty excited to try it out, but it was a fairly disappointing update for me. The slower load times, confusing street view, and bicyclist neglect are just a few of the reasons I don't enjoy it over t ...more
When most people think of Los Angeles they think of Hollywood and the movie industry, but in the last 10 years the city has rapidly transformed into a thriving new hub for visual artists. In recognition of this phenomenon, LA-based Snapchat has embraced the community by teami ...more