Report: Google and Imax's VR Camera Project Is Kaput
A joint Google-Imax venture to build a line of virtual reality cameras that’s been in the works since 2016 has been axed, according to a report on Monday from Variety.
Amazon Imagines Future Employee Surveillance With Patent Application for AR Goggles
Amazon was criticized earlier this year for a controversial patent application that detailed an “ultrasonic bracelet” that could be used to surveil workers. The company’s newly public application for augmented reality goggles made specifically for warehouse workers is far more alarming.
All the New AR Features Coming to iPhones This Fall
Apple’s World Wide Developer conference kicked off on Monday and among the refinements that we’re seeing for iOS is increased support for augmented reality. A brand new ARKit is dropping and along with it some impressive apps and features could make mixed reality more than just a novelty.
Leap Motion's New AR Headset All But Guarantees Your Public Humiliation
Leap Motion, the company behind the weird gesture-tracking controller for PC and VR, is showing off some pretty interesting tech in the form of an AR headset reference design. Whether or not you’ll be able to get your hands on the concept, which incorporates the company’s gesture control hardware, is another story.…
Snapchat’s Long-Awaited iPhone X Lenses Won’t Make Me Forget Rihanna’s Decree
iPhone X owners who still use Snapchat are in for a pleasant surprise today. The camera company, famously annihilated by Rihanna after it approved an ad mocking domestic violence victims, is finally releasing its previously announced lenses designed for the iPhone X. The feature was teased nearly seven months ago, so…
Magic Leap's Secrecy Obsession Is Reportedly Making Devs Say Screw It
At some point, Magic Leap is going to have to let people play around with its ultra-secret mixed reality device. Dev kits are now shipping to select partners, so it would seem that time is now. But the chosen few are required to take extra security precautions that make it unlikely you’ll bump into one of the headsets…
Augmented Reality Instruction Manuals Would Make Building Ikea Furniture Way Less Painful
Adam Pickard is a big fan of Ikea’s augmented reality app that lets you try out furniture in your home before buying it. But Pickard apparently thought a smartphone could be just as useful during the assembly process, so he mocked up a demo of an app that uses augmented reality to make building Swedish furniture…
The First Great iPhone App Grows Up
The very first iPhone apps were universally dull. And then Bloom came out. Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers built the app and released it just a few months after Apple opened the App Store in July 2008. It was immediately obvious that something special was happening. The app was interesting on an artistic level, one that…
This AR Street Fighter II Lets You Brawl in the Real World
Augmented reality experiences are oftentimes a dud, and the really mind-melting ones require hardware that costs a shit-ton of money. But Abhishek Singh seems to have figured out a way to make AR both accessible and really fucking cool. His latest project brings the classic arcade game Street Fighter II to life as a…
Bose Wants to Fundamentally Change How You Interact With Your World
There are no practical applications yet for AR—your mom isn’t using it to navigate a grocery store—but AR has become wildly popular in the tech community. Slap AR on a pitch and get some VC funding. Or, slap AR on the side of a product and bask in the AR buzz from tech publications. Bose, a company known for nice…
A Jurassic World Version of Pokémon Go Is Coming to Your Phone
After a few years of running around outside catching wild Pokémon, fans will soon have the opportunity to do the same with dinosaurs.
Artists Protest Elite Art World With Unauthorized AR Gallery at the MoMA
At this point, augmented reality has mostly been too gimmicky or too good to be true. But a group of internet artists just gave the technology what might be its coolest use case yet: a tool to stick it to the man.
Watching That Girl From The Ring Crawl Out of a TV in AR Just Ruined My Day
Augmented reality promises to deliver us a future in which we can simply look through our screens to magically transform the world around us. It also has the potential to really fuck your day up.
Holy Crap an AR App I Actually Like
Kids today want more from social technology than seeing something new—they want a new way of seeing themselves. Snap and Instagram’s augmented reality lenses transform users into puppies, fairies, monsters, Wonder Woman, storied Jamaican singer-songwriters, and the like. It’s as if there’s a vibrant but invisible…
This Iron Man Mask Could Be the Future of Toys
It makes absolutely perfect sense that augmented reality would find its way into an Iron Man toy. Tony Stark and AR go together like peanut butter and jelly. The Iron Man films, borrowing inspiration heavily from Minority Report, show an alternate universe where a man can slap on a tiny headset and get a cool computer…
Will Lasers Save Intel's Google Glass Clones From Sucking?
Intel thinks it’s figured it out. The company that makes the CPUs in most of our computers has produced a set of glasses that could do what Google Glass could not—and what Magic Leap desperately wants to. It’s produced a pair of “smart glasses” that look like something you might actually wear.
This Beautifully-Detailed Replica Is the Best Way to Learn About the Moon Without Actually Visiting It
To date, the best use of augmented reality has been running around parks trying to capture virtual Pokémon. But as that fad has (mercifully) faded away, a company called AstroReality has come up with a more compelling use of AR technology that works with an astonishingly detailed replica of the moon that’s as much a…
New Technology We're Actually Excited About for 2018
Yes, 2017's biggest tech story was probably about the ways in which social media forced us to rehash old culture wars and question who was guiding our political discourse. Rather than seeing technology facilitate greater communication, economic opportunity, and leisure, it seemed that it was exacerbating our…
Google Tango is Dead, Long Live ARCore
After months spent in limbo and not a single new compatible device, Google is finally shutting its Tango augmented reality platform down for good, effective March 1st, 2018.
This Double-Handed Glove Lets You Hold Four Beers Instead of Just Two
Federico Ciccarese and his company, Youbionic, imagine a not-too-distant future where everything we see is enhanced through augmented reality, and our body’s ability to interact with the world is upgraded through augmented physicality. What does that look like? For starters, a $2,000+ 3D-printed glove that puts two…
