augmentedreality
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Worlds collide: VR and AR in 2018
Oculus, the company responsible for kickstarting the $2 billion virtual reality marketplace, knows virtual reality is not the future. As its engineers pour millions of Facebook's dollars into the second generation of VR headsets, the company's head of research, Michael Abrash, is preparing for a world where augmented reality dominates our everyday lives. "No matter how good VR gets, few people would be comfortable socializing in person with someone whose eyes they can't see, and social acceptability is an absolute requirement for anything we wear in public," Abrash said at Facebook's F8 conference in April.
This is Magic Leap’s mixed reality headset
We've been following the development and rumors surrounding Magic Leap's glasses for awhile. Now, we finally have something official: The company revealed the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition headset on Twitter this morning. The mixed-reality glasses will ship in 2018, and while preorders aren't yet open (and there's no price point), you can sign up to be the first to know when it's available.
Snapchat's Lens Studio helps create your own AR effects
As fun as Snapchat's augmented reality World Lenses can be, there are only so many times you can see a headphone-toting hot dog before you crave something new. Wouldn't it be nice if you could make your own? Well, you can: Snap has unveiled a Lens Studio tool that lets anyone on Mac or Windows create their own AR effects for use in Snapchat. You do need some experience in 3D object creation, but you're otherwise off to the races -- you can submit your masterpiece and give others a Snapcode to unlock it. Those codes only last for 24 hours, unfortunately. However, you can share codes again if you like, and recipients can share them with others and spread the word.
Facebook Messenger adds Snapchat-style AR objects
Facebook clearly doesn't want any significant Snapchat feature to go unanswered. It's adding World Effects to Messenger's camera that, to no one's surprise, serve as direct parallels to Snapchat's augmented reality objects. You can float an arrow in the world to point to a landmark, put word bubbles like "bae" or "miss you" over your head, or throw in a "celebratory" robot... because robots, that's why.
Airbnb will add VR previews of rooms and cities
Airbnb has been expanding to serve users' other needs, from partnering with WeWork to find desks for traveling customers to investing in apartment complexes for season-length rentals. But the company isn't neglecting its main rental service. Today, Airbnb announced it has plans to implement the cool technologies du jour -- virtual and augmented reality -- to give tenants a closer look at the rooms they're looking to reserve.
Starbucks offers AR tours of its lavish Shanghai coffee shop
Starbucks has a long, long tradition of using tech to bring you into its coffee shops, and that will be truer than ever with the latest supersized Reserve Roastery location in Shanghai. The beverage behemoth will use a mobile app to offer guided augmented reality tours of the coffee-making process when the restaurant opens on December 6th. Point your phone at equipment like the roaster or cask and you'll get an explanation of what happens as beans eventually turn into your venti latte.
'Ingress' revamp will take cues from 'Pokémon Go'
With all the buzz around Pokémon Go and an upcoming Harry Potter game, it's easy to forget about Niantic's original augmented reality title, Ingress. It's looking old in the tooth, and not just because of its 2012-era visuals -- it's using aging tech that was made long, long before augmented reality hit the mainstream. The pioneering release is about to catch up, though. Niantic has offered a peek at Ingress Prime, a revamp of its hidden-reality sci-fi game due to launch in 2018. It'll sport a more polished, up-to-date design, but the biggest improvements will come from Pokémon Go... and not just the expected under-the-hood elements.
Lego AR-Studio puts virtual dragons in your physical sets
After the costly failure of its toy-to-life video game Lego Dimensions, Lego is turning to augmented reality to mix real sets with virtual elements. The new Lego AR-Studio app for iOS taps into Apple's ARKit platform to add animations and audio-visuals to the company's physical toys. Hold your smartphone over select Lego City and Ninjago sets and you'll be able to summon fire-breathing dragons, trains, and firetrucks dousing flames with hoses. Plus, any special escapades can be captured using the app's built-in camera. Whereas it may not awaken your inner-child (leave that to Nintendo), Lego-mad tikes should get a real kick out of it.
Google lets developers find 3D assets without leaving VR
Google recently unveiled Poly to give VR and AR developers an easy way to find 3D assets for their virtual worlds. Now, it has introduced Poly API to help developers work with and discover those assets directly in virtual reality. "It's just so much more natural to work in VR in something like [VR painting tool] Tilt Brush and then use it in a VR project," said CEO Max Weisel from VR developer Normal.
Amazon's latest toolkit helps you quickly create VR apps
Amazon probably isn't the first company you think of when it comes to augmented or virtual reality (with a few exceptions), but it's determined to change your mind. The internet giant has unveiled a developer service, Sumerian, that promises to simplify creating AR and VR apps -- and general 3D apps, for that matter. You can drag-and-drop objects to quickly create 3D scenes, produce animated AI-driven characters (powered by AWS cloud services, naturally) and script interactions between the user and other objects.
Apple buys the creator of a 'seamless' mixed reality headset
Those rumors of Apple making an augmented reality headset just got a little more fuel. TechCrunch sources say that Apple has acquired VRvana, a startup that crowdfunded (but hasn't shipped) a unique camera-based AR and VR headset, the Totem. Unlike Microsoft's Hololens and Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Totem promises a "seamless blend" between augmented and virtual worlds. It can display fully opaque images on its OLED display, letting it transition gracefully from AR to VR. Also, it eliminates the potentially disorienting lag that's characteristic with camera-based approaches to mixed reality -- prototypes have cut the delay down to just 3ms, as the company's Bertrand Nepveu explained in June.
Google Lens comes to Assistant on Pixel phones
You no longer have to fire up Google Photos if you want to use Lens to glean information from the world around you. Users have noticed that Lens is now available in Google Assistant on both original Pixel and Pixel 2 phones. Tap a camera button while using the AI helper and you can have it perform a search when you take a photo. It can identify what you're looking at, scour the web and launch other apps. You can rate results, too, so you'll hopefully refine Lens' results over time.
Williams-Sonoma buys AR firm to help you shop for home furnishings
Companies that do a lot of retail business online have been exploring AR in order to help customers visualize the items they're planning on buying. In the last few months, Target, IKEA and Amazon have all announced AR initiatives to help customers seee what furniture and other large items might look like in their homes. Now, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is joining that group. Today the retailer announced it was acquiring Outward, Inc., a 3D imaging and AR platform that's aimed primarily at home decor and furnishings, for $112 million in cash.
Apple’s 2019 iPhone could have a rear-facing 3D sensor
Apple has made no secret of its interest in augmented reality (AR) -- in interviews CEO Tim Cook gives it as much attention as sales growth. Now, it's rumoured that the company's 2019 iPhone release will come with a rear-facing 3D sensor, potentially turning the model into a leading AR device.
'Dance with flARmingos' in a mixed reality mating ritual
Flamingos rule everything around her. Her clothes are covered in them. Her workspace is littered with representations of their spindly legs and hot-pink plumes. She's spent hours studying their migratory patterns, mating rituals and native environments. She's traveled the world speaking to conservationists and ornithologists to better understand them. She even adopted 20 of the winged icons to aid in her research and their preservation.
Harry Potter AR game is coming from the makers of 'Pokémon Go'
It's hard to exaggerate the success of Pokémon Go, Niantic's augmented reality game. That's why it's such big news that the company has announced the hit game's successor. Niantic Labs will once again work with a much-loved property, but this time, it's Harry Potter. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is set to launch in 2018, in cooperation with Warner Brothers Interactive and Portkey Games, reports TechCrunch.(Update: Niantic has since officially confirmed this news and released more details on the game.)
Apple may be working on an AR headset for 2020
Apple has been talking a lot about AR lately. ARKit allows developers to create augmented reality apps for iOS devices, and it's already resulted in some pretty interesting stuff. This is apparently just the first step, though. Bloomberg reports that Apple is developing an AR headset that will be ready by 2019 and ship to customers in 2020. The company is looking to create a device that will change the game as much as the iPhone did back in 2007.
Adidas’ first shopping app is also a personalized news feed
It's hard to believe that Adidas hasn't had its own shopping app, considering that we're living in the age of the smartphone. But that's all about to change. Today, the German sportswear giant is introducing its (aptly named) "Adidas" application, which will let iOS and Android users buy products without having to go to their web browser. Adidas says the app is designed to offer an experience tailored for every consumer, based on the type of gear you're into or the sports you play. The main idea is for you to have personalized product recommendations, and the more you use the app with your account, the better it'll be at knowing your taste.
Google built a spatial audio kit for games and VR
Immersive audio is particularly important in an era where games are mainstream and virtual reality is quickly catching on, but there isn't a common framework for it. What works on your PC may be useless on your phone. Google wants to fix that: it's launching Resonance Audio, an open source developer toolkit that brings spatial audio to games, VR, AR and 360-degree video across many devices and platforms: Android, iOS, macOS, Linux and Windows are all covered. The technology borrows from Google's VR Audio kit to spatialize "hundreds" of 3D sound sources in real time, even on low-powered hardware like your smartphone. And depending on where it's running, it can even produce clever effects with a relatively low performance hit.
For Nike, augmented reality is the perfect way to sell hyped sneakers
Buying limited-edition shoes is complicated and not as fun as it should be. The rise of violence in sneaker culture (people have been murdered for a pair of Air Jordans) led companies like Nike to launch hyped products almost exclusively on digital channels. But selling sneakers on a website, or doing raffles on Twitter, came with challenges of its own. That's because resellers started using bots, automated computer scripts, to buy or reserve pairs faster than a human could. If you couldn't enter an address and credit-card number in a matter of seconds, whatever you were hoping to get was going to be sold out.
