Disney Magic

Dark mode themes for mobile apps are all the rage these days, but YouTube is taking that a bit literally with its latest augmented reality experience. On Monday, to promote the release of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, which debuts in US theaters on Friday, Disney released a v ...more

Magic Leap's legal battle against Nreal has taken an intriguing turn this week, as Magic Leap set a date to discuss the matter with Nreal. But a new partnership struck by Nreal adds another wrinkle to the duel between the two AR wearable makers. Meanwhile, Magic Leap, YouTube ...more

Magic Leap has earned a reputation for overt secrecy, but as it nears the highly-anticipated launch of the Magic Leap One, the company is spilling some of the beans. This week, we get a heaping helping of information on the Lumin OS, as well as a couple of great demos. Meanwh ...more

This week, we continued our NR30 series highlighting the leaders of augmented reality space by profiling the venture capitalists and strategic corporate investors that sustain the industry. Fittingly, investment in AR made headlines this week, as Magic Leap acquired a mesh co ...more

Alternate US history is the go-to move for hot new cable and streaming shows, from HBO's Watchmen to Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, reimagining how things might have turned out is an endless well of narrative inspiration. The latest show to delve into this genre comes from Disne ...more

Musical theater enthusiasts are about to enter a whole new world of melodic storytelling via augmented reality. Immersive production company Wilkins Avenue, along with its Pollen Music Group, is debuting the first-ever AR musical through the spatial computing lenses of the Ma ...more

There may be questions from some about the future of Magic Leap, but in Japan, The Force is with the augmented reality startup. Japan's arm of fashion retailer H&M and Disney are using the device to promote a special promotion of customized Star Wars apparel. Don't Miss: Mag ...more

UTILIDOR n pl. -S an insulated system of pipes for use in arctic regions 59 points (9 points without the bingo) UTILIDOR is a portmanteau word for "utility" and "corridor" used to describe a large enclosed and insulated conduit built either above or below the ground surface ...more

This batch of live action reenactments of classic disney movie moments features Olivia Wilde as the Evil Queen from Snow White and Seven Dwarfs. In this frame there is also Alec Baldwin as the face in the magic mirror. Beauty and the beast features another Tron 2.0 actor, Jeff ...more

Halloween will be here in just over a week, which means next week these Scrabble Bingo of the Days will become more horrific. This week, there's just a few relevant Halloween seven-letter words for your Scrabble vocabulary, referencing witchcraft and one of the eeriest horror ...more

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 An ...more

In his famous 1996 "Content is King" essay, Bill Gates predicted that content is where tech companies will make money on the Internet. The adage clearly holds true in the current phase of augmented reality experience. For example, Magic Leap, Snapchat, Facebook, Google, 8th W ...more

This week, inside sources divulged details of how Apple nearly acquired Leap Motion, twice. Otherwise, companies offering or working on augmented reality technology had more successes than failures to talk about. For instance, the AR industry's courtship with the fashion worl ...more

Disney Parks are hard at work bringing the technology from a long time ago in a land far away to life for the opening of Star Wars Land parks in Anaheim and Orlando in 2019. Much of the environment, characters, and peripherals can be recreated through construction, costumes, ...more

After announcing another massive round of funding to the tune of $502 million, Magic Leap is adding another powerful weapon to its creative arsenal: John Gaeta, the man who helped develop the iconic Bullet Time effect for The Matrix series of films. Gaeta made the announcemen ...more

The first season of Star Wars: The Mandalorian may be over, but the love for its biggest star, Baby Yoda, persists. And while Disney wasn't able to get Baby Yoda toys to fans in time for the gift-giving season, there's still at least one way to interact with the adorable youn ...more

Give your ghoulish guests on Halloween a realistic spooky display of a head speaking inside a magic crystal ball. To make this even creepier, the talking head is the ghostly Madame Leota from Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion. To recreate this Halloween decor, you'll need a flatsc ...more

Amid the coronavirus chaos, two companies at the forefront of augmented reality technology took starkly different approaches to their upcoming developers conferences, as Facebook has canceled its annual F8 conference and Magic Leap plans to invite a limited number of attendees ...more

When you think of AR experiences, you typically think of something that either involves a headset or a handset. Augmented reality without either of those things has seemed impossible in the past. But if anyone is going to try to find a way to have an augmented reality experien ...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

One of the funniest scenes from the teaser trailer for the Wreck-It Ralph sequel is the basis for the new pre-show augmented reality experience via the Noovie ARCade app. Arriving in theaters on Nov. 21, Ralph Breaks the Internet finds the titular character expanding his digi ...more

While "Baby Yoda" from The Mandalorian threatens to overshadow it, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arrives in theaters next week, which means it's time for Disney and Lucasfilm to ramp up its promotional strategy. And there's little surprise that augmented reality is part of ...more

Netflix is branching out into the comic book business, and it's summoning augmented reality via Facebook to make the first issue more magical. The debut issue of The Magic Order hit comic book store shelves today with four variant covers. Inside each issue is a QR code specif ...more

Lightform might just be the thing to have at your next party. The San Francisco-based company just created the first computer ever able to connect to a projector and instantly scan 3D scenes to mix reality with projected light. Not only that, but Lightform just raised $2.6 mi ...more

It looks like Jaunt's pivot from VR to volumetric captures services for augmented reality experiences has paid off. That's because Verizon has now acquired the company for an undisclosed amount, per a brief announcement issued by Jaunt on Monday. Don't Miss: The Future of Au ...more

After some social media teasing, the Star Wars universe's Magic Leap debut has finally arrived. On Tuesday, Magic Leap announced the release of Star Wars: Project Prog, which is available for free via Magic Leap World. In addition, ILMxLAB, the immersive entertainment divisi ...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

Super Ventures has published "The AR Landscape," a chart encompassing the major players and startups that are shaping augmented reality. Launched in February as the first incubator and fund focused on augmented reality, Super Ventures outlines companies working augmented reali ...more

In the late nineteenth century, the advent of the motion picture wowed audiences with a new storytelling medium. Nearly a century and a half later, augmented reality is establishing a new frontier in film. At the 2020 edition of South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, kickin ...more

It turns out that attending the L.E.A.P. conference last month may have mostly been best for demoing the Magic Leap One in person, as the company has now uploaded the majority of the insider panels held at the event in Los Angeles. Just a day after releasing an initial set of ...more

With many office workers in the US being asked to work from home if their job allows, Magic Leap's customary updates for the Lumin OS and Lumin SDK brings some help to keep distributed workforces connected. Chief among the new features arriving with Lumin OS version 0.98.10 a ...more

Smartglasses startup Nreal enjoyed some highs and endured some lows this week, as the company landed a product placement with Kevin Bacon but then faced production issues related to the coronavirus outbreak. But Nreal wasn't the only company dealing with the virus, as some of ...more

As excitement looms for Apple's annual parade of pomp and circumstance for its latest lineup of iPhones, some hidden hints in an internal build of iOS 13 has Apple enthusiasts salivating for what Cupertino is testing in the AR wearables realm. While Apple has yet to even conf ...more

It takes confidence and guts to pull off attractive and yet adequately frightening Halloween makeup as an adult. But rest assured, Perfect Corp's makeup try-on app YouCam has published a new face filter that it crowns the "spookiest, most glam and ghoulish" of all the makeup ...more

With all the hype around Magic Leap's recent launch, it's easy to forget that augmented reality hardware is still very much in its infancy. While we marvel at what is available now, researchers are still finding ways to design and produce more sophisticated components for next ...more

Like Marvel's Avengers, Facebook's Camera AR platform now has a number of new AR superpowers at its disposal, so it is fitting that Earth's Mightiest Heroes have the distinction of displaying them. Available now in via Facebook on iOS and Android, the Avengers: Infinity War A ...more

After facing reports of financial troubles over the past month, Magic Leap came out swinging this week with a big push for the enterprise segment of AR, including a repackaged Magic Leap 1, a suite of enterprise apps, and updates to Lumin OS and its supporting development ecos ...more

This week, Next Reality released the fifth and final set of profiles on the NR30 leaders in augmented reality, with this chapter focusing on the influencers in the industry. Coincidentally, a company with a representative among the NR30 AR Influencers, Magic Leap, monopolized ...more

With the announcement of ARKit 2.0 at WWDC 2018, Apple is bringing some powerful new capabilities to mobile augmented reality apps this fall. Shared experiences, persistent content, and 3D object recognition will enable more social, transcendent, and immersive experiences for ...more

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. With Harry Potter and the Cursed Child returning to Broadway this f ...more

Lego has shipped several apps and products that add an augmented reality dimension to their playsets. But it has taken a reality TV show from Fox to allow brick fans to build with virtual bricks in augmented reality. Just in time for National Lego Day on Tuesday, the Disney s ...more

Unless you've been totally off the grid, there's a good chance you're aware that the Disney Plus streaming video service launched this week. And, if you're on this site, you're likely salivating over the new Star Wars series, The Mandalorian. But did you know that the service ...more

Already a dominant force at the box office, Marvel Studios appears intent on establishing itself as the ruler of augmented reality media as well. After licensing Iron Man to Hasbro for the Hero Vision Iron Man AR Helmet as a tie-in to Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel has return ...more

Riding the coattails of one of the biggest movies this year, the first edition of the new Moviebill augmented reality magazine will be available at Regal Cinema theaters nationwide this weekend alongside the release Avengers: Infinity War. Moviegoers will be able to scan the ...more

A new technological movement without the technology itself is just an idea sitting and waiting. Once the technology is present in the equation, movement forward can begin. This is how many of us see the head-mounted displays (HMDs) and smartglasses that have recently entered t ...more

Magic Leap has had a rough couple of years, highlighted by high-profile executive departures, lawsuits, troublesome patent shuffles, and massive layoffs. Despite this, things seem to have calmed down at the augmented reality startup under Peggy Johnson, but there are still qu ...more

Alongside Sesame Street, the Dr. Seuss universe has been a constant presence in the formative years of several generations of children in the US. Now, Dr. Seuss's creations are continuing to maintain relevance with today's youth via augmented reality, just as the Sesame Stree ...more

While holographic Whitney Houston is hitting the road, a new mobile app is bringing volumetric captures of up and coming performers directly to the iPhones and iPads of fans. On Wednesday, AR studio 1RIC launched Jadu, a video app that delivers virtual performances by music a ...more

In a world full of augmented reality camera effects apps, one app is going in a more social direction. On Tuesday, a rebooted version of Octi (which first debuted in 2018) dropped on the Apple App Store. Now, instead of merely adding AR effects to photos and videos, the app u ...more

Last month was a whirlwind for the augmented reality industry, with the Augmented World Expo, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, and an exciting Magic Leap Twitch livestream all wrapping up before the ides of June. Now that we've had a chance to fully digest it all, we h ...more

When Disney teased an augmented reality game called Star Wars: Jedi Challenges running on a headset from Lenovo, fans had more questions than Disney had answers. When? How much? Can I be a real Jedi? With official word today from Lenovo and Disney by way of IFA 2017 in Berlin ...more

UPDATED 5/4/17: SI has stated that they won't be augmenting its Swimsuit Edition. Although, this could be a sign that the company may do so in the future. If they already have all the tech set up for the latest feature, then they are already half way ready to augment other SI ...more

The Disney Research Lab is using projector-based illumination to paint actors' faces during live performances. You know what that means? Disney just took Halloween to a whole new level. Here's how they did it: The actors move on stage, sans makeup, while the AR light follows ...more

Over the past few weeks, Google, Snap, and Facebook have all taken their turns to show off their new augmented reality technologies. This week, it was Apple's turn, with new AR features for iOS 15 along with new capabilities for developers. Meanwhile, Facebook's plans to laun ...more

Google, you have something that I want. You may think you have some idea of what you are in possession of, but you do not. In a few moments, it will be mine...and it can be yours, too, dear readers. That something, of course, is Baby Yoda...er, Grogu...from the Disney+ Star W ...more

In 2018, Niantic unveiled its in-development augmented reality cloud platform for smartphones, the Niantic Real World Platform. A demo showed Pikachu and Eevee cavorting in a courtyard, darting in front of and behind potted plants and people's legs as they walked through the s ...more

At first glance, it may not sound like there's much value in doing a crossword puzzle in augmented reality, but The New York Times has managed to revamp the pastime as an immersive game. On Tuesday, the media company published its December 22 mini-crossword puzzle via the Spa ...more

With the new season of The Mandalorian underway, Google has launched a new AR app that enables some Star Wars fans to connect with virtual characters in between new episodes. That is, as long as you have an Android smartphone. Check that...a 5G Android smartphone. Don't Miss ...more

By now, you've probably been inundated with enough Baby Yoda memes to last you a lifetime. But if you don't have the new Disney Plus streaming service on your TV, you're probably wondering where all this is coming from. Well, lucky for you, just in time for the holiday season, ...more