vr

Next week will mark the arrival of a solar eclipse that will be visible across a path spanning from the west to the east coast of the US. Many people are planning to make the trip into the path of totality to see it in person, but if you can't for some reason, no worries. CNN has teamed up with Volvo Cars to livestream the eclipse, but not with ordinary cameras. The duo will livestream the eclipse from multiple locations in 4K Ultra HD and 360-degrees.

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Right this minute the biggest names in smartphones are speeding toward the next "big thing" in mobile devices: Augmented Reality. Qualcomm is the latest company to make a public showing of their efforts with what they call "Qualcomm Spectra ISP, 2nd Generation." That' ISB as in Image Signal Processor, this paving the way for high-powered smartphone cameras that can do things we've never seen before.

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A lot of people already live in their browsers, but there are still some things that browsers, even with advanced technologies, aren’t able to do. That’s especially true with applications and use cases that require sophisticated and resource-heavy graphics. Trying to prove that such is not the case anymore, Mozilla has just pushed out the latest version of Firefox that pushes performance to the limit. And what better proof of that than by adopting WebVR to bring virtual reality to the masses. The masses that have VR headsets, that is.

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One nice feature about the Oculus Rift is the ability to play virtual reality games from a variety of different store fronts. It doesn't matter if you purchased your game from a place like Steam or GOG instead of the Oculus Store - the game will still run on the Rift. There's just one small problem with that functionality, as up until today, switching between non-Oculus Store apps meant taking the headset off and making the switch through the PC interface for a lot of people.

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Virtual reality as we know it is still a pretty young technology, but already there are companies looking to push VR to its limit. This week at the SIGGRAPH conference, a company named Neurable is showing off a new type of VR game that has some very exciting implications for the future of the platform. Instead of playing this game with a pair of VR controllers like the ones that come with the VIVE or Oculus Rift, you instead use your mind.

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The next big thing from Apple won't be a piece of hardware - it won't be the fabled iPhone 8. The next big product to come from Apple will work on the next top-tier iPhone, but it wont work exclusively on that device. While it's the hardware we continue to focus on, and the hardware that's always easiest to discuss, it's something far more complicated (and yet exceedingly easy to work with) that'll change the way we see the world.

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Back in May of last year we first saw the rise of the VR backpack with such manufacturers as Aorus, MSI, ZOTAC - and HP. Imagine our surprise when HP came here in July of 2017 again with another far more sleek and low-profile entry into this ecosystem.

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A discovery this week in Apple software revealed a set of details about the iPhone 8 - or whatever it'll be called. Coming from HomePod Firmware, this code shows how the next new iPhone will have a new feature that'll allow biometric-based lock-opening. The scanner(s) required to make this happen may well threaten the surprisingly top-notch scanning abilities of Snapchat - easily the most-used app for Augmented Reality right this minute.

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Despite the surge of interest and content in consumer virtual reality, thanks to the likes of Oculus and HTC Vive, proponents quickly saw the technical limits of current technology and devices. For one, wands and sticks make for poor approximation of our hands. For another, these VR headsets keep us tethered to desks or, at the very least, laptops. The next wave of VR innovation seems to be focused at freeing headsets from the shackles and cables, and HTC is jumping at the forefront with its new Vive standalone headset, powered by none other than Qualcomm’s latest platform.

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We've known since this past E3 event that Bethesda has a Fallout 4 VR edition in the works, though it was only revealed for the HTC Vive headset. That arrival is set to take place this upcoming October, but a recent leak reveals apparent support for PlayStation VR as well. The information comes via an alleged GameStop catalog that also reveals some other big VR games inbound for the PS VR.

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Generally speaking, earnings calls are a pretty boring affair, and Alphabet's own Q2 earnings call yesterday was no different. However, there were a few good morsels of information to be found by sitting through the call, one of them concerning Google's VR efforts with Daydream. During the call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai gave us an estimate of where Daydream should be by the end of the year.

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Smartphone users around the world know what Pokemon GO is and what it's capable of doing to their free time. With the release of Pokemon GO Fest and the events that surround it, Niantic's proven that a full year of active gameplay is not just a fluke. This game is not just popular because it's part of the Pokemon brand. Instead, it's a headliner in the new age of the mobile smart device experience.

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