Near Reality

If you're a golf fan who can't attend the Arnold Palmer Invitational in person, you can still follow the next stop on the apparent Tiger Woods comeback tour in augmented reality with an iPhone or iPad. The PGA Tour AR, available now on the App Store for ARKit-compatible devic ...more

Eventually, even the most private company has to file its patents and unveil its tightly-held secrets, and Magic Leap is no exception. The US Patent and Trademark Office recently published a treasure trove of Magic Leap patent applications that appear to provide more details ...more

Master director Steven Spielberg's virtual reality epic Ready Player One is coming to theaters in just a few weeks, but you can get an early look at some of the best parts the latest trailer, "Come With Me," which was revealed on Thursday. But while the film is supposed to be ...more

Snapchat just fast-tracked the majority of its app user base into the world of augmented reality production by making its Lens and Filter tools available to anyone with a web browser. On Thursday, Snap released a new web-based tool called Create Your Own that lets anyone crea ...more

Amazingly, SpaceX founder Elon Musk just launched a Tesla into space, bound for Mars. But just because you're not a billionaire with drone rockets at your disposal, that doesn't mean you can't participate in the automobile-infused future of space here on Earth. Audi has just ...more

The knee-jerk reactions to Magic Leap's long-awaited augmented reality device, the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition, range from pent-up joy to side-eyed skepticism. That's what happens when you launch the hype train several years before even delivering even a tiny peek at the p ...more

Last week, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz teased his Twitter followers with some "fun and cool stuff" to share in the coming days. On Monday, he made good on that promise, sort of. If you're a fan of Sigur Rós, he hit the right note, but if you were expecting to see what the com ...more

In the years leading up to the release of the Apple Watch, we were frequently teased with concept designs of what Apple's smartwatch might look like. Of course, many of those outlandish designs were off the mark, but the attention to the idea itself hinted that the public was ...more

Apple CEO Tim Cook told us that augmented reality would change everything, and now we have a better idea of exactly what he meant. A new report reveals that Apple is already hard at work on a rear-facing 3D sensor for the iPhone that would vastly expand the iPhone's AR capabi ...more

On August 21, a total solar eclipse will be able to be seen across the country for the first time since June 8, 1918, and it's going to be incredible. Retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak spoke to ABC News about what to expect and said: It's unlike any other experience yo ...more

With mobile developers near and far primed to implement augmented reality into their iOS apps with Apple's ARKit, uSens offers them a new tool for markerless location tracking. The tracking solutions provider announced today that they have developed an inside-out positional t ...more

Germany-based Pupil Labs has jumped into the UX and control deep-end with a range of products that allow the user to add eye tracking to not only their existing augmented and virtual reality head-mounted displays but computers as well. This type of technology can add a new dep ...more

If you're not familiar with Bixby, I don't blame you. The Samsung assistant was released two months ago with the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. While users were excited about this Google Assistant-like feature, they were ultimately disappointed by the limited rollout of only some of B ...more

Today in Santa Clara, California, at the Augmented World Expo, Scope AR revealed a major new update that will add markerless tracking for their remote assistance application, Remote AR, on standard devices. This update, powered by real-time image tracking solution Wikitude, p ...more

Every Tuesday, Next Reality will give readers a rundown of the augmented and mixed reality news briefs from the preceding week that we didn't cover already. This way, you'll never miss anything of importance in the Next Reality landscape, and will always know what's going on w ...more

Could the technology that powers games like Pokémon GO be used for surgery in the near future? Researchers at the University of Maryland think so. Amitabh Varshney, a computer science professor and director of the Augmentarium facility at the University of Maryland, along wit ...more

While augmented reality is mostly in the minds of consumers in the form of Pokémon GO, AR has been popular behind the scenes, with AR companies marketing it as a tool to help business operations become more efficient. This business-to-business market is the target of the new a ...more

Apple recently scored a patent (number 9,488,488) to create augmented reality maps, hinting at possible AR integration into the iOS Maps application for iPhone. Does this mean we'll be seeing super visionary projections of places in the app in the near future? Maybe. Apple fi ...more

A few days ago, there were flying piranha, snakes, and dragons roaming around freely at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, but they weren't real or even hallucinations—they were holograms brought to life with the Microsoft HoloLens. The National Association of Music ...more

The Meta 2 developer kit has finally begun shipping! Gary Garcia, the senior director of customer success at Meta, just sent out an email that they are shipping out to the first round of preorder customers. Waves will be building from there, up to far higher manufacturing rate ...more

Unity released the Beta 5.6 on December 13 with a bunch of new upgrades in the works, including support for Vulkan, better instancing options, and more improvements to particles—to name just a few that are potentially relevant to the mixed reality community. And today, Decembe ...more

Dutch police are using a system very similar to Pokémon GO on smartphones, but they aren't walking around trying to catch little pocket monsters. The purpose of this system is to give augmented reality help to first responders who may be less qualified to work a fresh crime sc ...more

Today at the Unite '16 conference in Los Angeles, Unity's Timoni West and Amir Ebrahimi showed off its new virtual reality authoring and world editor, EditorVR, using the HTC Vive. Coming in December to Unity is a version of its editor that works inside a VR headset, which wil ...more

Augmented reality (AR) holds much promise for how we'll interact with technology in the future, but we still have many hurdles to clear before that dream fully comes to fruition. Right now we're stuck with low-resolution headsets that cover only a small portion of our field o ...more

Want to actually catch 'em all? Pokémon GO has long-teased the opportunity to hunt for Pokémon in the real world through augmented reality, but few have had the opportunity to actually see it in action. Now anyone in the US can sign up for the field test for the chance to get ...more

These days, news papers, online editorials and magazines are filled with news on Iran and Syria. Of course, that is expected, as such sources need to stay current to stay in the game. My concern is that most of these articles talk about what to do about these situations. One ...more

With the list of available mobile apps for moviegoers constantly expanding and improving, seeing a film at your local theater has never been better. With the right apps for your iPhone or Android phone, you can research movies, find out if showings are sold out, reserve seats, ...more

As augmented reality continues its collision course with mainstream adoption, the technology will now have a role in one of the most anticipated boxing matches of the year. On Saturday, the much-hyped rematch between challenger Tyson Fury and champion Deontay Wilder (the figh ...more

Some of the leading big tech companies are still working in the lab on actual products, but at least some of their leadership did have some thoughts to share on the future direction of the technology this week. Meanwhile, we had the opportunity to check out two newish AR offe ...more

As the demand for realistic volumetric video for AR experiences begins to grow (along with the available facilities and services for capturing it), researchers at Google have figured out how to improve upon the format. The team has devised a system, called "The Relightables," ...more

Halloween may be finished, but the augmented reality chills are not over yet for some people. Arachnophobes are bravely facing their fears by cozying up to augmented reality spiders for a university study. Wayne State University's Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic ( ...more

Suddenly, Magic Leap's lawsuit against Nreal, as well as its barrier to entry in the Chinese market, appears to be as insurmountable as The Great Wall itself. On Friday, Nreal revealed that it is partnering with China Unicom, China's fifth-largest wireless provider, to bring ...more

Until Star Wars-style 3D hologram projection technology becomes commonplace, the near future of certain kinds of remote work is in robotics. Now, a new dynamic is using augmented reality to give this kind of telepresence a kind of superpower. This week, Double Robotics unveil ...more

In the last few years, the HoloLens has become a popular tool for use in medical procedures and training. But recently, the Magic Leap One has gained momentum in the space as well when it comes to medical use cases. The latest medical app for the Magic Leap One, the CHARM (sh ...more

A new profile on Apple's exiting design chief Jony Ive, the man behind many of the company's most successful products, paints a fuller picture of what led to his departure. But amid all the talk of a gradual decline in Ive's presence in Cupertino, as well as reports of disill ...more

While augmented reality industry continues to grow, analog board games are also making a comeback. So, why not join the two together? That's the gist behind Tilt Five, an augmented reality headset that projects 3D content onto a game board. Players interact with the games via ...more

Two years ago, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the F8 Developers Conference keynote with augmented reality and the introduction of Facebook's AR camera platform, now known as Spark AR. Since then, Facebook has faced an avalanche of controversy on its appro ...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

Location-based gaming company Niantic knows its business model is inextricably tied to the outdoors, so it is in its best interest to help preserve that environment to give players a place to play. So, for the second straight year, Niantic will encourage Pokémon GO to assist ...more

Already a powerhouse for its graphic design tools, Adobe is making a run at the 3D content creation realm dominated by Unity and Epic Games by acquiring software maker Allegorithmic. The move, announced on Wednesday, will allow Adobe to add Allegorthmic's Substance tools for ...more

If waveguide display maker DigiLens has its way, enterprise businesses and consumers will soon be able to purchase smartglasses for less than $500 — as long as they can supply their own computing and battery power. On Monday, the company unveiled DigiLens Crystal, a reference ...more

While the technology companies continue to drive forward with autonomous vehicles, Nissan's vision of the future of self-driving automobiles lies in a cooperative experience between human and machine, facilitated by augmented reality. At CES 2019, which officially kicks off t ...more

Occasionally, a not-so-great movie also does something so right that you have to forgive some of its sins and give it a little love. Such is the case with the latest film from Keanu Reeves, Replicas, which takes a HoloLens-style device and gives us a look at how future researc ...more

While Leap Motion has given makers a DIY solution for building their own augmented reality headset with Project North Star, a self-described "AR wonk" has taken the blueprints one step further by creating an untethered version. Noah Zerkin, a research and development project ...more

Nearly a year to the day after the unveiling Magic Leap One, Magic Leap has dropped another update to the Lumin OS that runs the device. Lumin OS version 0.94 is available now as an over-the-air update or via download on the Creator Portal for Magic Leap One users. The bulk ...more

In a leaked company memo, Snap CEO (and NR30 member) Evan Spiegel has made it clear that the future of the company lies not only augmented reality but also hardware that enables those AR experiences. In other words, Snap is definitely planning on getting into the smartglasses ...more

A major obstacle to the mainstream acceptance of smartglasses is the current inability able to smoosh processors, sensors, and batteries into a pair of frames that look cool. Wearables maker Thalmic is hinting that it may have figured it all out. North is Thalmic's consumer s ...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

Any little bit of new light shed on Apple's rumored augmented reality plans is irresistible, and the latest comes from a fairly powerful source — a former Apple engineer who worked on the iPhone. Working as a human interface designer, Ken Kocienda joined Apple way back in 200 ...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

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

At present, consumer-facing augmented reality is a mobile world, and Snapchat is making money on it through advertising partnerships. The future, however, is in wearables, and that future is getting closer. While Magic Leap is lining up content for the launch of Magic Leap On ...more

On Wednesday, June 6, the people at Magic Leap finally (FINALLY) decided to give the public a dedicated, slow, feature-by-feature walkthrough of the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition. How was it? About as good as it gets without actually getting to see what images look like thro ...more

All those early prototype images Magic Leap is so fond of showing off are great, but they rank a far second when compared to a new set of images just revealed by Microsoft in relation to the HoloLens. In a blog post on Tuesday, Microsoft's Bay Area Team posted images of the e ...more

Noted poet T.S. Elliot once wrote that "April is the cruelest month." But Magic Leap might argue that March is the most miserable, as the Ides of March brought more legal woes to augmented reality startup. Elsewhere, its closely-held branding secrets have been spilled by way o ...more

Now that we finally have vertical plane recognition in ARKit (at least on a developer level until the spring iOS 11.3 release), the real promise of mobile augmented reality is beginning to come into focus on iOS. But a new report indicates that a major near future advancement ...more

A new survey of game developers paints a somewhat less than rosy future for augmented reality gaming, but there's still some hope for its long-term prospects. The Game Developers Conference, which is holding its annual event in March in San Francisco, recently surveyed about ...more

While self-driving cars appear to be as inevitable as augmented reality headsets, the auto industry and its technology partners likely have years of testing to complete and regulatory loopholes to jump through before self-driving cars hit most highways. Until then, the same c ...more

Ride-sharing firm Lyft says it will continue to rely on drivers in the near and long term even as it replaces them with driverless cars, Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft's director of product, said during a Podcast with Recode. In other words, Matthiesen says Lyft plans to offer oppo ...more

Three years ago, with VR enthusiasts prepared to throw their money at Oculus to get their hands on the yet-to-be-release Rift headset, Google surprised the audience for Google I/O with Google Cardboard, a seemingly late April Fool's joke that actually jump-started virtual real ...more