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Nreal's mixed reality glasses will cost $499 and ship this year
First unveiled at CES 2019, Nreal's Light mixed reality glasses are almost ready for their commercial debut. According to the Chinese startup behind the glasses, they'll cost $499 and a limited quantity will ship to customers sometime this year. They'll enter mass production in 2020, and starting today, developers can place orders for the $1,199 developer kit, which will ship in September. Nreal announced the news at the AWE 2019 conference.
Rokid’s Vision AR headset has a 3D stereo display
At this year's CES, Rokid showed off Glass, an AR headset that's meant primarily for enterprises. Though it was a little rough around the edges when we saw it in January, the company announced today that the Glass is finally ready for mass production. But that's not Rokid's only unveiling. At the Augmented World Expo today, the company also offered a sneak peek at its next-generation AR glasses. It's called the Rokid Vision, and it's designed to be used by consumers too (though you probably won't be able to buy it; more on that below).
Volvo designers are driving around in mixed-reality headsets
I'm sitting in a Volvo XC60 in Italy when a moose appears from out of a doorway. Except that none of this is real. I'm actually sat in an office chair in a San Francisco office building, wearing Varjo's XR-1 mixed-reality headset. It's a ridiculous scenario, but both virtual reality and augmented reality are adding a new twist on the car design process.
Qualcomm made a headset to remind the world it has an AR chip
Last year, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon XR1 chip just for virtual reality devices, but so far, we haven't seen any headsets built to use it. Now, for Augmented World Expo, the company has released its own "Smart Viewer Reference Design" headset in order to reduce AR and VR headset development time. It looks to hold a lot of potential, packing just about every feature you'd want in a VR/AR wearable.
Magic Leap’s lackluster AR demo proves hardware is still hard
Magic Leap announced last week that its mixed reality glasses -- which have been shrouded in mystery and hype for almost four years -- will be available later this summer. What should've been exciting news unfortunately fell flat. In a developer chat on Twitch that same day, the company showed off a less-than-impressive prerecorded demo of a small rock golem throwing some rubble around. Compared to earlier videos of a crashing whale in the middle of a gym and a floating solar system, this just came off as disappointing. Was this all there was?
Mobile Miscellany: week of September 9th, 2013
If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week, Virgin Mobile brought two new smartphones to the table and Play Music All Access subscribers received one more way to discover new tunes. These stories and more await. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that's happening in the mobile world for this week of September 9th, 2013.
Farewell and thank you, WoW.com
I've told this story a few times before: I actually started out on WoW.com as a comment troll. A few years back, Jennie Lees was the lead blogger here, and she posted something silly about a wallpaper or a plush doll, I don't remember. I was also reading the forums at the time, and Blizzard had just dropped new priest patch notes. "Why are you posting this junk," I commented angrily, "when the priest notes just dropped?" She was nice about it -- she actually emailed me and said that the priest updates post was coming soon. And I felt so bad about it, I never activated the comment. But a little while after that, when WoW Insider posted that they were looking for some new writers, I applied, and said that I was sorry for that comment, but that I was working on becoming a writer and could help out with posting on the site when needed. When I started writing for WoW Insider (now WoW.com, obviously), I was working retail in Chicago, writing part-time in the evenings. The site itself got only a few thousand hits a month, with one or two weekly features and maybe ten comments per post. Now, over three years later, I'm a fulltime freelance writer, I've been to three BlizzCons, I've written over 1.7 million words in over 3,300 posts here about everything in Azeroth, and the site itself rivals some of the best blogs on the Internet, routinely garnering millions of hits a month. I helped build this site with my own two hands, and while I definitely can't claim all the credit (there was and is a huge team of people who keep this thing running), it's with a fair amount of sorrow that I'm here to tell you today will be my last day on WoW.com.
