Lenovo is diving further into wearables, with the ThinkReality A3 smart glasses promising virtual displays, 3D visualization, remote collaboration, and more, by tethering either to your laptop or smartphone. Announced at CES 2021, the headset runs Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR1 for AR glasses and attempt to squeeze wearable computing into a sunglasses-style form factor.
This week Niantic announced that they'd acquired the company called Mayhem. This acquisition was made for what Niantic described as a reinforcement of their commitment to "real-world social as the centerpiece of our mission." In other words: They're aiming to take a more firm grasp on the masses of gamers playing Pokemon GO out there in the real world.
This week the augmented reality game Minecraft Earth was announced as headed for the graveyard. On June 30, 2021, the game will officially end support, and no more Minecraft blocks will appear in any players' augmented reality as such. Does this mean that Minecraft interest is dying too, or that this game didn't capture the Minecraft spirit?
Shopping online for certain products is still tricky if you don't already know what you want, but we're increasingly seeing the use of technologies in ways that make things easier. The latest example is Google's latest AR feature, which enables users to virtually try on makeup from select brands to see how it looks.
It's no secret that Google has had very little luck with anything that comes close to being a social platform. It is perhaps less known that it also has had very little luck when it came to 3D content. While SketchUp briefly became a buzzword in the 3D modeling space, Google eventually relinquished its hold on the product just after six years of acquiring it. Now another one of its 3D-related products will be joining its notorious graveyard, once again raising concerns about its commitment to VR and AR technologies.
Although it is only recently that OPPO's name became more familiar around the world, the company has long been making innovations in the smartphone space, including some rather unconventional form factors. Those include the OPPO N1's rotating camera as well as the more recent OPPO Find X's pop-up top. These days, however, nothing says "unconventional" more than foldables, swivables, and rollables so it is with great pride that the company is revealing its OPPO X1 2021 rollable concept phone alongside its next step in AR eyewear.
Oculus has taken up the majority of the VR news of late, though not always in a positive light thanks to parent company Facebook. It isn't the only game in town, of course, but HTC's Vive has mysteriously gone a bit silent. And then there's the realm of mixed reality, where VR and AR collide. Microsoft's HoloLens, technically an AR system, is pretty much still the biggest player and it has just announced two major updates that aim to bring its mixed reality platform to more users and more developers.
We now live in a world that revolves around digital objects but we still naturally have to deal with physical ones. Bridging the two have never been easy nor seamless but a lot of technologies, like augmented reality or AR, try to narrow the gap. But while AR brings digital objects to the real world to some extent, a new app goes the opposite direction and lets you clip and drop real-world objects into your digital canvas.
The Nintendo Switch game Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is a masterpiece of simple yet extraordinary at-home gaming fun. It combines good game design with the magic of successfully bridging the gap between reality and virtual reality with one of the most ideal implementations of augmented reality we've experienced so far. One considerable limitation is the size of the physical space in which one hopes to race. Is that limitation enough to avoid buying and playing the game at all?
Sony Electronics has officially unveiled its new Spatial Reality (SR) Display, which is made using the company's Eye-Sensing Light Field Display. The display was shown off at CES in January and doesn't require a VR headset. Sony says that the display enables creators in various industries to bring their ideas to life in three dimensions.
On the eve of Apple's big iPhone reveal event for 2020, a new leak is claiming that the rumored HomePod mini and Apple TV will be host to some impressive tech. Specifically, the leak tells us that both of these products will act as Ultra Wideband (UWB) base-stations. When used in tandem with other devices using Apple's U1 chip, the HomePod mini and the new Apple TV will be able to track where those devices are.
The United States Army Research Laboratory's Research Office has provided funds under the Small Business Innovation Program to develop prototype AR goggles for dogs. The project aims to provide technology that makes for safer canine scouting missions by enabling human handlers to better communicate with their dogs remotely. Among other things, the goggles enable humans to see exactly what the dog is seeing.