Facebook is making big changes behind closed doors, according to a new report, by restructuring its augmented reality glasses division and moving those employees into a newly launched standalone team dedicated specifically to the product. These employees were moved from the company's Facebook Reality Labs to the new product team, where they're reportedly working on multiple AR products.
CBS has announced big plans for its Super Bowl LIII broadcast, including 8K cameras and the use of augmented reality. The network will have 115 cameras at the game, with "multiple" of them being 8K cameras intended for "dramatic close-up views" of the game action, according to the company. This will be the first time any US network has used 8K cameras to present the game.
Augmented Reality headset-maker Meta has shut up shop, as the multi-million dollar startup found itself pinched between a patent lawsuit and an asset selloff. The company first made headlines back in 2013, with its Meta 1 AR headset promising gesture controlled virtual computing.
Smart glasses are coming, and since augmented reality wearables need to be closer to designer sunglasses than they are to Google Glass, transparent displays need to raise their game. That's just what smart eyewear display specialist Lumus is doing, bringing along its latest Sleek display prototype to CES 2019 this week to show how AR could have mass-market appeal.
Discreet AR glasses company North's Focals smart specs sounded a lot like Intel's ill-fated Vaunt project, and it turns out that's with good reason. The startup - formally known as Thalmic Labs - got a boost to its patent portfolio by acquiring the patents and gadgetry Intel had developed for its project, it's been confirmed.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and AR stickers are still AR stickers even if you call them Playground. Last October, Google relaunched its already limited AR Stickers as Playground and made them even more exclusive to the Pixel 3. Of course, Google promised it would eventually be exclusive to its older phones as well. In the spirit of the season of giving, Google has finally started rolling Playground out to the OG Pixel and the Pixel 2, in time to spruce up your e-postcards and selfies.
Microsoft has ditched Intel and will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset for the upcoming next-generation HoloLens, but it's not the one you might have expected. The hotly-anticipated augmented reality headset is shaping up to dramatically improve the blending of virtual objects with the real-world, but of course all of that demands power - and power efficiency.
LEGO has launched a new augmented reality portal called LEGO AR Playgrounds, an app through which kids can access "mixed reality experiments" from the company. The portal is only available on iOS at this time, leveraging LEGO's blocky world and combining it with AR tech to slot virtual worlds into the real world.
The folks at Bose revealed a new sort of product called Frames today. Bose Frames are sunglasses that have their own speakers built in. Each pair of Frames is connected via Bluetooth to the user's smartphone and provide wireless access to virtual assistants as well as sounds of all sorts. While the speakers are external, they're still relatively private - aimed at the user and kept from the rest of the world with some interesting directional sound tech.
Snap isn't giving up on wearable cameras, with a new set of Snapchat Spectacles tipped to arrive before the end of the year with double the cameras. The new sunglasses will be Snap's third attempt at the product and, it's suggested, the most expensive - and capable - to-date, as it moves closer to a vision of compelling augmented reality.
Its foldable phone, or at least its foldable phone UX, might make the big headlines this week, but that is hardly all that Samsung has planned. It’s probably going to take the backseat for a while, but Samsung’s augmented reality ambitions are just as big. At its Samsung Developers Conference, the Korean tech company has alloted six sessions to AR. And while some of them seem to be devoted to the AR Emojis everyones either loves or loves to hate, Samsung might also have big news planned in the form of an AR cloud platform and even an AR headset prototype.
Pokemon GO might be the game that finally made it money, but Niantic Labs’s real groundbreaking work was on Ingress, perhaps the first worldwide “augmented reality” mobile game. It was a hit for a small niche market when it launched in 2012, a market that may have felt a bit abandoned when Niantic turned its eyes on Pokemon GO. The company is now going back to its roots to take the lessons from both of its games to breathe new life into the game. Welcome to Ingress Prime.