Role Models

Amazon Web Services (AWS) opened its re:INVENT developers expo with a bang by launching Amazon Sumerian, a new tool that could become the dominant platform for building cross-platform augmented and virtual reality applications. Available now as a preview, Amazon Sumerian is a ...more

Christmas came early for Apple, as the company was awarded more than 40 patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday, including one covering a system for compositing an augmented reality construct based on image recognition. The patent (US 9,824,495) covers a syst ...more

Google quickly learned over five years ago electric vehicles (EVs) were the powertrain of choice for its then fledging driverless car program and the industry has since followed its lead. Now, every major carmaker has an EV program of some kind, while all-electric powertrains ...more

Self-driving car models and fleets get most of the media attention, but it is the suppliers that design and make the technologies underpinning the driverless revolution, says Guillaume Devauchelle, the vice president of innovation and scientific development for leading tier-on ...more

This week, augmented reality spawns in the world of online role-playing games with a soft launch down under from an indie game developer. Meanwhile, in Asia, another startup wins a coveted award for its AR headset. Finally, an established player in the mobile AR touches up its ...more

While it may seem like the Cold War 2.0 is happening, at least some US spies are getting the content Americans need. That's right, Electrek has gotten some new pictures of the Tesla Model 3. The Model 3 is supposed to be equipped with Tesla's Autopilot 2.0, which, as Electre ...more

Albert Einstein once said, "We know less than one thousandth of one percent of what nature has to reveal to us." While this still lies true, that fraction has inspired man since the beginning of human life. You can see the reflection of nature in the poems we read, the theatr ...more

Over the past decade, Marvel Studios has been a dominant force at the box office, raking in more than $21 billion dollars. Averaged out over that span of time, the yearly earnings of those movies outweigh the gross domestic product of some countries. And while those films hav ...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

While Magic Leap doesn't yet have a consumer edition of the Magic Leap One, that hasn't stopped AT&T from building apps for mainstream audiences for the headset. Elsewhere, startup 6D.ai, a company that shares Magic Leap's dream of the AR cloud, officially released the iOS ve ...more

The future of smartglasses for consumers seems ever dependent on Apple's entry into the market. Coincidentally, the exit of Apple's long-time design chief Jony Ive has shed some light on that eventual entrance. Meanwhile, as the enterprise sector of AR continues to expand, on ...more

We've seen a variety of AR experiences related to athletic footwear over the years, but Puma is betting sneakerheads will buy into a version of interactive design where sneakers are the augmented reality experience The shoemaker launched the LQD Cell (pronounced "liquid cell" ...more

This week, the recurring theme in augmented reality can be summed up fairly succinctly: content is king. For Magic Leap, content comes in the form of the delivery of the Madefire immersive comics app. In the case of Apple, content arrives via a virtual try-on tool from Warby ...more

Despite its status as a hot commodity amongst emerging technologies, the augmented reality industry is not immune to the ebbs and flows that occur in every industry. As Microsoft prepares to unleash the sequel to original HoloLens, Meta Company has crashed and burned, as the ...more

This year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be fertile ground for augmented reality to show its worth, as both Walmart and Target have crafted immersive experiences designed to engage shoppers in the coming weeks. But the marketing similarities end there, because the ...more

As it prepares to ship its first product by the end of the summer, Magic Leap has managed to impress yet another high-profile investor in telecommunications giant AT&T. In addition to the investment, AT&T will serve as the exclusive wireless distribution partner for the consu ...more

In its latest feature with an assist from augmented reality in storytelling, the New York Times shows readers the virtual crime scene it constructed to prove that the Syrian military conducted chemical warfare against its citizens. In the article, "How We Created a Virtual Cr ...more

This week, saw two companies leaning on AR to prop up their financial futures. On one hand, Apple made quite a bit of AR-related news ahead of its quarterly earnings report next week. On the other hand, Vuzix launched a pre-order program for its Blade smartglasses and closed ...more

The fatal crash of Air France Flight 447 is one of the most tragic accidents in avionic history — while it also serves as a stark reminder of what can go wrong when humans rely too much on driverless vehicles. The tragic 2009 plane crash off the coast of Brazil involved an Ai ...more

Tesla hopes high-level personnel changes will help it gain an edge in neural network knowhow for its models' self-drive features, following the replacement of its Autopilot chief and the appointment of a recent Stanford grad to head its AI and Autopilot vision research. To th ...more

A report by PwC highlights that immersive experiences in augmented and virtual reality represent the fastest growing segment of the entertainment and media industry over the next six years. News from two companies working in the industry, Fox and NetDragon, underscore the grow ...more

Every Friday, Next Reality reviews the latest headlines from the financial side of augmented and mixed reality. This Market Reality column covers funding announcements, mergers and acquisitions, market analysis, and the like. This week's column is led by two companies cashing ...more

The search for a cancer treatment that selectively finds and kills only the cancerous cells has just made a giant leap forward. A new study published in Nature Communications, by a group of researchers from the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, Barcelona Insti ...more

We may not fully appreciate all the important roles wheat plays in our lives until it's gone—or at least, when it's in very short supply. What would a world be like without bread, cakes, cereal, pasta, or wheat beer? If the dire warnings about an impending stem rust fungus com ...more

In the summer of 1976, 4,000 American Legionnaires descended upon the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for a four-day convention. Several days later, many of the attendees experienced symptoms of severe pneumonia. By the beginning of August, 22 people ha ...more

Using mathematical modeling, researchers suggest weather and warming created the "perfect storm" that drove the Zika outbreak in 2016. Carried by mosquitoes, Zika is a Flavivirus first identified in Uganda in 1947 by scientists conducting research on yellow fever. Zika forest ...more

Good day people, today we will examine some basic, for some people well-known attacks, also we will take a look at some advanced attacks. At the beginning I must stress that this article is not technical - in other words if you wanna hands-on exercise, this is not article for ...more

While the big names in augmented reality demonstrated the breadth of opportunities in the industry's landscape this week, one new startup showed off what is possible further in the future. On the AR wearables front, Magic Leap and Nreal, two of the current front-runners for A ...more

Now that we've officially seen the HoloLens 2 and Microsoft has shown off the improvements and new superpowers of the augmented reality headset, what about the specs? Luckily, Microsoft has laid bare the full specifications for its next-generation headset. Let's dive in and s ...more

With the recent launch of the LG V30 and the Pixel 2 XL, LG has reintroduced the world to POLED. This display tech was showcased at CES 2015 and billed as a rival to Samsung's AMOLED displays, then promptly disappeared from the market for two years. But now that two of the big ...more

After learning that you'll need to spend at least $74 on a special charger and a USB Type-C Lightning cable to enable fast charging on the new iPhone X and iPhone 8 models, you may be wondering why you can't just use the standard Lightning cable. While we can't answer why Appl ...more

Data for mapping and other applications is the lifeblood of machine-driven cars, and so far, Tesla has taken a definitive lead in information it has gathered ahead of other driverless players, including Waymo. But Tesla's position could be short-lived, if the world's largest ...more

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill that began on April 20, 2010, was the largest maritime oil spill in history. Killing 11 people and discharging 4.1 million barrels of oil and natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico, the event was an unparalleled personal, environmental, and busines ...more

Long before Apple and Android became household names, Nokia dominated the mobile industry. The Finnish company was one of the first to develop smartphones, and their classic N95 with 2G "high-speed" internet connectivity was declared the "best smartphone ever" by some in 2007. ...more

Although their effectiveness is waning, antibiotics remain a front-line defense against many infections. However, new science reveals using the wrong antibiotic for an infection could makes things much worse. It is common knowledge that overuse of antibiotics has led to the g ...more

One of the big hurdles when equipping vehicles with sensors for autonomous driving is the cost. For example, the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors that power many versions of self-driving car technology are pricey, currently ranging from around several thousand dolla ...more

Back in the days when June Cleaver was our role model, stay-at-home moms eagerly greeted their offspring's arrival home from school with fresh-baked cookies. But in the current vernacular, "Ain't nobody got time fo' dat!" So what's a busy modern parent to do? (News flash: dad ...more

With the new year right around the corner, it's time to talk about the end of the 19th century, a time which plays an enormous role in Steampunk. If you've done any reading of British books written from about 1890 to 1899, you may have come across the phrase 'fin de siecle' an ...more

Here at Next Reality, our typical approach to all things augmented reality involves vision combined with remote control, either via a handheld device, gaze control, or hand/finger tracking. But a new dynamic takes the notion of interaction with virtual content into a new real ...more

One of the biggest advancements in the new iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR is the dual SIM functionality that will let you use two cellular networks at once. Like Sinatra, however, Apple is known to do things its own way, so their dual SIM setup is a bit different than you might thi ...more

Cruise Automation, the driverless car startup General Motors (GM) bought for $1 billion in 2016, is readying a formidable fleet of robo-taxis for rollout in cities throughout the US. But when it comes to details about how the company plans to realize these lofty goals, it's be ...more

While some researchers look for drugs to treat HIV, other scientists delve deep into the virus itself for answers on how it causes infections. Using two supercomputers, University of Illinois research scientist Juan R. Perilla and late physics professor Klaus Schulten simulat ...more

Type 1 diabetes is an attack on the body by the immune system — the body produces antibodies that attack insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. Doctors often diagnose this type of diabetes in childhood and early adulthood. The trigger that causes the body to attack itself ha ...more

User interfaces for computers have evolved over the years, from the introduction of the keyboard and mouse on the personal computer, to touchscreens on mobile devices, to natural voice recognition. However, the same cannot be said for robots or drones—until now. There are two ...more

Since I first announced the new Null Byte recognition for excellence a few weeks ago, several of you have written me asking, "How can I study for this certification exam, and what material will be covered on the exam?" Now I have an answer for you. The White Hat Hacker Associa ...more

After the mobile augmented reality platforms of ARKit and ARCore moved Google's previously groundbreaking Project Tango (the AR platform that gave us the first smartphones with depth sensors) into obsolescence in 2018, we've seen a bit of a resurgence of what was then a niche ...more

Comparing the present-day states of the consumer and enterprise sectors of augmented reality is like evaluating the merits of sports car versus work trucks. Like consumer AR, sports cars are sexy and exciting, but perhaps a bit impractical at times. On the other hand, enterpri ...more

Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that augmented reality (or, AR for short) will "change everything." But what, exactly, is augmented reality? Generally, augmented reality refers to the process of presenting virtual objects and imagery — usually through a wearable lens or external ...more

Nvidia's decades-long development of graphics processor units (GPU) for PCs has given it a major leg up in the driverless space. Lead by charismatic founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Nvidia has recently extended its engineering knowhow to add neural networks for machine to its GP ...more

Quanergy CEO and founder Louay Eldada is, by any standard of measure, a pioneer in the development of LiDARs for driverless vehicles. Eldada's involvement with designing and engineering optical sensors dates back to his research work on LiDAR (light detection and ranging sens ...more

After the dust settled from Apple's annual iPhone event, there's not a lot to get hyped up about the iPhone 13 lineup, particularly if you upgraded your smartphone last year. Sure, the iPhone 13, along with the premium Pro and Pro Max and the pint-sized Mini variants, get spe ...more

Over the past week, practically every major tech company working on augmented reality has held their quarterly earnings calls with investors, and each addressed or at least mentioned the role of AR during their prepared remarks. However, Facebook's earnings call had some of th ...more

I drop my smartphone a lot. Like an absurd amount of times. Practically multiple times a day. So it's surprising that my iPhone 12 Pro has lasted nine months without a cracked screen yet. Part of that has to do with the late-2020 model's durability, and the other part is thank ...more

Influencers of augmented reality demonstrate expertise in their fields and outline a strong vision for the future that they evangelize to others. They help define the direction of the industry and identify others who foster and create innovation in the field. The idea of the ...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

It is almost indisputable that smartglasses and head-worn displays are the future of augmented reality. However, at this precise moment, they are still a very niche market. Those who have been in the presence of a HoloLens, Meta 2, or Magic Leap One have witnessed how powerfu ...more

When shopping for a new smartphone, you'll encounter comparisons and spec sheets that are filled to the brim with values like mAh, GB, and GHz. To the average consumer, however, these values are meaningless, so we end up looking at which device has the specs with the highest a ...more

Apple has a sterling reputation when it comes to managing its supply chain; it's where CEO Tim Cook proved his mettle to succeed Steve Jobs. Now, the company has made a strategic investment with a supplier that will be crucial to its future plans for AR wearables. While Apple ...more

Phone specs get better and better each year, and multiplayer mobile games are right there with them. Instead of playing solo, jump into some real-time gameplay with co-op and player vs. player modes, and battle friends, family, and strangers from around the world. But which mu ...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