China-based Nreal wants to make a permanent place in everyday life for its ready-to-wear, mixed reality glasses (MR). Recent tweaks in the design and development of the AR smartglasses were revealed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
GDC 2019 kicks off today, and one of the big announcements from the first day involves Angry Birds, which will soon be making the jump to augmented reality. Today, Rovio and Resolution Games announced Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs, which is something of a follow up to the virtual reality game of the same name. While Angry Birds is a franchise that's seen a ton of releases over the years, augmented reality could give us a fresh spin on its age-old gameplay.
Don't be turned off by the VR-like imagery in this article - this goes way beyond games, VR, and AR. Qualcomm-made headsets are about to get simple, easy to use, and able to be utilized in a number of different ways. If what Qualcomm's got onboard with "Qualcomm Boundless XR for PC" is plausible, there'll be no need for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens, or mobile VR headsets of any sort. Those brands might just be using Qualcomm's tech to replace what they've got today with what's common tomorrow.
Back in November, Niantic and Warner Bros. officially unveiled Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. With Niantic at the helm, we already had a decent idea of what to expect: an AR game set in the Harry Potter universe that plays at least somewhat similarly to Pokemon GO and Ingress. Today, the two companies detailed the gameplay of Wizards Unite further, telling us budding wizards what we'll be doing when the game releases later this year.
The start of 2020 might well be the most exciting in years from an Apple fan's perspective. A prominent - and usually quite accurate - analyst by the name of Ming-Chi Kuo suggested Apple will likely release their first AR glasses in the second quarter of the year 2020. This will be an accessory, not a self-contained piece of hardware, according to the analyst - at least in its first edition.
HoloLens 2 is here, and while we may not be quite the target audience Microsoft has in mind, you'll forgive us if we get excited about the mixed-reality headset all the same. The second-generation AR wearable promises improvements in comfort, functionality, and software, but there are some key areas where the differences will really add up.
Qualcomm showed up to MWC this morning with some pretty big news, announcing that the Snapdragon 855 will be at the center of a new extended reality ecosystem. Qualcomm’s XR ambitions have been out in the open for a while now, and while the company is working on its XR1 platform, it’ll also be partnering with various OEMs to create lightweight XR headsets that are tethered to 5G, Snapdragon 855 smartphones. Officially dubbed XR Viewers, these new headsets could make things like AR and VR more accessible for a larger segment of consumers - assuming, of course, that they have a compatible smartphone.
On the heels of Qualcomm’s announcement that it’s partnering with a ton of OEMs to make XR Viewers that tether to 5G smartphones, Vuzix is pulling our attention back to Qualcomm’s XR1 platform. Today at MWC, Vuzix debuted the latest pair of smart glasses in the M-series, the M400. Primarily aimed at enterprise customers, the M400 is among the first products to use the XR1 platform.
Microsoft HoloLens 2 has been revealed, a smaller, more powerful version of the augmented reality headset, complete with a much larger field-of-view. The company also unveiled a new cloud-connected camera, the Azure Kinect, which could power checkout-less stores, production lines, and more.
Visitors at Fitzrovia in London were surprised by a store that contained little more than a big Snapchat logo. Scan that logo however, and your phone launches Snapchat, which fills the seemingly empty store with 3D renders of LEGO Wear apparel using its AR technology. The app overlays the white walls of the room with LEGO Wear items and characters that usher you around the digital store. Visitors can tap on shelves and racks and browse through the new line of clothes and buy items right from their phones.
Google just reinvented how we navigate our way around unfamiliar places. It’s called Google Maps AR and it’s solves all sorts of problems we currently experience when travelling with a GPS.
This Friday the folks behind ARCore reminded developers that Android is a virtual playground of augmented reality tricks and tools. Evan Hardesty Parker, Software Engineer at Google working with ARCore, revealed a bit about the latest update to ARCore this afternoon. In version 1.7 of ARCore, Hardesty suggests that they are "focused on creative elements like AR selfies and animation" and are aiming to assist developers in improving the "core user experience" in their AR apps.