Life Is Life

On Friday, at IFA 2018 in Berlin, Samsung invited attendees into the residence of Family Guy's Griffin family to learn all about its "smart home" products via augmented reality. "If Peter Griffin can have a smart home, then everyone can," said Samsung via its webpage for the ...more

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. The game's maker, Warga ...more

Since getting our hands on the Magic Leap One last week, we've been methodically delving into each feature and reporting our findings step-by-step. Earlier this week, we took a look at the Screens app (a video viewer) and the Helio app (an AR web browser). This time around, we ...more

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. Available now in the App Store and Play Store, MTG Manager help ...more

One of the more compelling human interest stories of the summer has been the plight of the Thai Wild Boars soccer team, who were trapped in a cave for weeks. To show just how perilous the largely unchartered cave was, The New York Times has transported its readers into an aug ...more

In keeping with its focus on loading the Magic Leap One with content at launch, Magic Leap has inked a creative partnership agreement with augmented reality production studio Square Slice Studios. "The team at Square Slice Studios has a reputation for forward thinking and inn ...more

The old school staple of many US homes with children, the remote control race track, has been given new life in augmented reality thanks to the Room Racer app for iPhones and iPads. Using ARKit, the app places a miniature race track on a floor or tabletop. The game includes n ...more

The spirit of Google's Tango augmented reality platform lives on at Vivo, a China-based company that has developed its own 3D sensor for mobile devices. Presented during this week's Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, the smartphone maker revealed its new the time-of-flight (T ...more

While 3D motion capture via iPhone X is coming soon from Unity, software maker Reallusion offers similar functionality to 3D model animation producers today. With CrazyTalk Animator 3, users can now add animation to virtually any image, bringing it to life with motion effects ...more

The latest augmented reality feature from The New York Times gives readers a close-up view of the damage left behind by the eruption of Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala earlier this month. Through the NY Times app for iOS and Android, readers can walk around a truck in the villag ...more

Just in time for the release of Pixar's highly anticipated sequel, AR Emoji based on characters from The Incredibles 2 have arrived for Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. Originally announced at the launch of Samsung's latest flagship devices, Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, Violet, Dash ...more

It's not an official app, but for fans of Rick and Morty, it's a welcome piece of the series' universe until the recently renewed animated show returns to Adult Swim. Created by New York-based filmmaker Gabe Jacobs, the short experience is designed to be viewed via Snapchat a ...more

Images captured by Microsoft's next generation Kinect depth-sensing camera that will facilitate augmented reality experiences in the next version of the HoloLens and give computer vision to untold multitudes of connected devices in enterprise facilities, have made their way in ...more

After delaying its launch by four months, LG revealed its 2018 entry to the flagship market on Wednesday, May 2. After years of an underperforming mobile division, the LG G7 ThinQ is the first product since a shakeup within the division to get things back on track, and it brin ...more

One of the most popular sports shows on television, Inside the NBA on TNT, gave viewers a tech-powered treat on Tuesday night by dropping them into a broadcast version of augmented reality. During the show's "Gone Fishin'" segment, which is dedicated to teams eliminated from ...more

PUBG is currently taking the mobile world by storm, and it's easy to see why. The game has breathed much-needed life to the multiplayer shooting genre, primarily by adding an element of sheer terror as you scavenge for weapons in a hostile environment. With new players continu ...more

With a fresh series of videos and a new webpage, Snapchat has composed an answer to its own question, "What is Snapchat?" In short, its answer is that "Snapchat is a camera." In an extended commercial (below) accompanying the new webpage, it's evident that the camera does qui ...more

Why would Magic Leap, a company preparing to launch its first augmented reality headset this year, need a developer for iPhone and iPad apps? It's not as crazy as it sounds. The company has published a job listing for a senior iOS application developer to "help create the fut ...more

Space might be the final frontier, but NASA is making a detour into augmented reality first. The Spacecraft AR app, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with Google, debuted exclusively for Android this week (an iOS version is also in the works ...more

Flying under the radar during Magic Leap's big week at the Game Developers Conference, the company settled a potentially ugly lawsuit with a former employee. Earlier this month, we reported that Magic Leap's senior director of global security, Todd Keil, was embroiled in a di ...more

Continuing with its new paradigm of using augmented reality to cover the news, The New York Times has published a feature story that takes a peek into the late David Bowie's eclectic wardrobe of on-stage outfits. The retrospective showcases four iconic Bowie costumes, includi ...more

In a huge surprise, Verizon is the first US carrier to push out the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ Android Oreo update. The update has been available in international markets for some time now, but this is the first report of a rollout in the United States. We've already ran down all t ...more

Google is constantly changing and updating its apps to make the lives of its users easier. Google Maps is no exception, as the company now includes options for wheelchair accessible transportation routes. From now on, you can set a trip with accessibility as a priority with Go ...more

The guy who recreated Super Mario Bros. as a first-person obstacle course is back with an augmented reality take on another classic game. While the previous experiment was built for HoloLens, this time the developer, Abhishek Singh, has come up with an AR version of the class ...more

Historically, Apple loves to drop hints about its major upcoming events through clues included on its invitations. Those invites usually require a good bit of deciphering to connect the dots, but in the case of Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2018 invit ...more

Despite the wide availability of markerless augmented reality experiences for mobile devices, there is still a market for scanned triggers for content, as evidenced by the new image recognition capabilities on Facebook's Camera AR platform. AR experiences for the movies Ready ...more

The idea of translating in real-time has become quite popular recently, with Google's Pixel Buds integrating the feature. However, their implementation is audio-only. Until recently, you needed to download a frequently-unreliable third party app to translate text using your ca ...more

The oldest Zen temple in Kyoto, Japan, is now firmly rooted in the future with the launch of the MR Museum on Thursday. Produced by hakuhodo-VRAR, a new HoloLens experience at Kyoto's Kennin-ji Zen temple turns what was static imagery and art into living history, including a ...more

Security-minded users can reduce the risk of phishing by enabling Advanced Protection on important Google accounts, requiring a U2F security token to log in. Using these keys isn't intuitive on most popular smartphone platforms, and you can find yourself locked out if you don' ...more

Ever since Microsoft sold Nokia to HMD, they've hit the ground running with a new lease on life. Quick updates have become their hallmark, with even their lower-end phones getting Android Oreo in a timely fashion. The same holds true for their current flagship, the Nokia 8, wh ...more

Apple released iOS 11.3 beta on Jan. 24 and the public stable release on March 29, and it didn't take us long to find plenty of cool new stuff. Aside from new Animoji, Health Records, and some upcoming changes related to the recent battery fiasco, most of the new features are ...more

When it comes to marketing, sexy sells, a point that has been lost on most augmented reality hardware makers focused mostly on the geek space. But a new promotional spot from AR-in-the-car accessory maker WayRay indicates that AR companies are beginning to see the virtual sizz ...more

Huawei recently announced the Honor 7X, a mid-tier smartphone aimed at budget-conscious consumers. Spearheaded by the Kirin 659 SoC, it offers great performance at a price point where speed is normally an afterthought. Today, Huawei is making this $199 phone even more attracti ...more

It seems fitting that Time magazine's first augmented reality cover is an issue guest edited by Bill Gates, since the company he founded is currently leading the AR charge via the HoloLens. There's also a certain irony that the AR experience, which includes narration from Gat ...more

A new telemedicine application for the Microsoft HoloLens is promising paramedics and EMTs a new tool for diagnosis and treatment of patients in the field. Designed through a partnership between medical software company Exelus and HoloLens developer HoloForge, Nomadeec levera ...more

Harry Potter fans can set down their wands for a spell, as the highly-anticipated augmented reality game from Niantic based on the franchise won't arrive until after July at the earliest. In an interview with The Financial Times (subscription required), Niantic CEO John Hanke ...more

As awesome as the 2017 Galaxy lineup may be, few can forget the monstrous disaster that was the Note 7's exploding battery. Needless to say, the last thing Samsung wanted was another news story about a problem with the Note 8's battery. Unfortunately, that's exactly where we f ...more

Back in November, Essential opened the Android Oreo Beta Program for all users of their PH-1 flagship. We even wrote up a full guide on how to install the beta, if you're interested. They followed the Oreo beta with a Reddit AMA, where they mentioned the second beta software w ...more

On Monday morning, secretive augmented reality startup Magic Leap revealed a collaboration with Icelandic music group Sigur Rós. But the story detailing the app didn't reveal anything more than a still image of the interactive Tónandi app, leaving most of us to use to our imag ...more

When it comes to identifying what's fashionable on the runway, including cutting edge tech that bleeds into the mainstream of style, Vogue magazine stands at the top of the list. So it's fitting that the fashion tastemaker has now updated its iOS app with an AR camera effect ...more

Last month, BMW rolled out its playful take on augmented reality with Snapchat, and now the automaker is bringing that same immersive computing whimsy to iOS directly. Using Apple's ARKit, the BMW i Visualizer app allows you to select and customize a life-sized version of the ...more

Now, when the weather outside is frightful, Pokémon GO players can expect it to be just as unpleasant in augmented reality. A new update to the popular location-based AR game brings a dynamic weather system to the game. In the new update, weather effects on the game's map wil ...more

Earlier this week, we told you about the new Star Wars augmented reality collaboration with Nissan that will bring the famed science-fiction franchise to auto showrooms, and now we can show you what it looks like. The AR experience, called "See the Unseen," which is only avai ...more

Augmented reality is making many of our childhood dreams from Star Wars come true. A week after Lenovo gave us the ability to actually play Holochess, Apple has now made it possible to take live video of ourselves and layer on a (non-3D) hologram-like effect, closely resemblin ...more

Just days after the launch of Google Poly, the marketplace for 3D virtual objects that developers can use for augmented and virtual reality apps, SketchFab, the current leader in the space, is firing back with a major enhancement to its platform. The company has announced an ...more

Just as we started running through the features packed into the Android Oreo beta for the Galaxy S8, Samsung has started pushing out the second beta to eligible devices. According to DroidVendor, the update is rolling out as build G955USQU1ZQK1 for the Galaxy S8 Plus. The roll ...more

Google just released the second developer preview of the Android 8.1 update for Nexus and Pixel devices, and even though it's just a point-one release, there are lots of cool changes. Before you run off to join the Android beta program and try the new version, it's worth readi ...more

Honeywell recently completed successful testing of virtual window technology that enabled drivers to maneuver an otherwise windowless combat vehicle on rough terrain at speeds exceeding 35 miles per hour. The testing was conducted under contract with the Defense Advanced Rese ...more

While other devices are moving away from fingerprint scanners (cough, iPhone X), for many, a fingerprint scanner provides the best balance between security and speed. Typically, the rear fingerprint scanner on the LG V30 is quick and accurate, but every so often the phone will ...more

At their event in San Francisco today, Microsoft announced that they have begun accepting pre-orders for Windows Mixed Reality headsets from Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and HP, with the devices arriving on Oct. 17 along with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Video: . In addition, t ...more

If you're a regular reader of this site, there's a good chance friends and family turn to you as their volunteer technical support staff. In these instances, it can be difficult to troubleshoot purely through just verbal descriptions over the phone. While there are a plethora ...more

As a long-distance runner off and on for the past, I absolutely detests hills. While there are many apps that can measure elevation and slope for certain routes, understanding spatial data on a line graph or even an elevation map can be difficult. A solution arrives by way of ...more

The new iOS 11 update provides an easy software-based solution to shut down your iPhone in case the power button, officially known as the Sleep/Wake button on all iPhone models except the iPhone X, goes bonkers. In addition to this, there's also a hidden setting that lets you ...more

Apple demonstrated their continued interest and investment into the awesome world of augmented reality during their Sept. 12 event, highlighting a few new AR games that will appear on iPhones thanks to ARKit. But that's not all you can expect — as long as you have an iPhone wi ...more

If you've ever wanted to hone your paintball skills, without spending a ton of money and making a huge mess, Show Me Virtual and Apple's ARKit have an app for you. The demo was posted on YouTube and shows how you can master paintball through your phone. Your device acts as a ...more

Chipmaker Qualcomm introduced the second generation of its Qualcomm Spectra image signal processor (ISP), which has gained capabilities that will enable smartphones to facilitate augmented reality apps. The latest Spectra ISP, which controls the speed at which the camera modu ...more

One of the defining parts of my childhood was getting extremely frustrated with claw machines at arcades. Usually, that was because as fun as they were, they were probably rigged and wouldn't actually grab anything. Which is why a new claw machine demo made with Apple's ARKit ...more

A few months ago, a video went viral of a boy playing Super Mario Bros. in the middle of Central Park using augmented reality and the HoloLens. Since then, we've been clamoring to play the real-life version of the classic game. While the original creator has not specified any ...more

At the risk of breaking a few rules, we're going to talk about Fight Club. More specifically, digital artist Mateusz "Marpi" Marcinowski has mimicked a scene from the movie using Apple's ARKit. In the "IKEA Nesting Instinct" scene, while the narrator ruminates about his consu ...more

If you've ever browsed a restaurant menu and wondered what a particular dish looks like, then the augmented reality mobile app from Kabaq was made for you. KabaQ displays highly-realistic 3D models of menu items on the user's view of their table, allowing them to see various ...more