Augmented reality

Using Nothing But Google’s Project Tango Tablet To Escape A Maze

The Palau Nacional (Catalan for National Palace) is a gigantic Renaissance-style palace built in 1929 that now serves as the main art museum in Barcelona. Google sent me into that gorgeous maze of never-ending halls and corridors armed only with a Project Tango Prototype. We already know that Lenovo and Google are making a phablet…

Watch Cute Monster Drawings Get Drawn into Real Life

Augmented reality artist Marty Cooper is back with his always fun Aug(de)mented Reality series that splices imaginative little drawings of cute monsters into real life. They’re always so clever and up to no good, popping out of places you’d least expect them to and doing things with so much pizazz that you’d wish they were…

Augmented Reality Climbing Looks Like So Much Damn Fun

I love climbing arguably more than breathing, but when you’re stuck in the same gym with the same routes all day long, it can get just the teensiest bit boring. This augmented reality climbing game seems like the perfect antidote. Jon Cheng’s AR game isn’t particularly complicated, or even too hard to pull off: connect…

What It’s Like to Wear Bionic Earbuds

If you love live music, the new Here Active Listening System is an impossibly nerdy idea that might change the way you experience your favorite hobby. I’ve been using one of the first production versions of the sound-altering tech for a few days, and I’m excited about the potential for a world in which I…

Google Glass Could Have Been a Brilliant Interactive Lego Instruction Manual

Google Glass is dead, and the company is doing everything it can to make the world forget it ever sold the wearable experiment. It wasn’t a complete disaster, though. The product had occasional moments of brilliance, like this Lego Assistant app that walks users through building a complex model, without the need for a manual.…

Microsoft’s Latest HoloLens Is Here, and It’s Amazing

The HoloLens headset from Microsoft is the world’s first untethered wearable that generates holograms before your eyes. It’s been nearly a year since we first strapped on a prototype, and as the tech goliath prepares to unleash a first batch of units to developers in the coming months, I was invited to check out just…

Apple Bought the Company That Helped With Motion-Capture For Star Wars

Apple, a maker of expensive aluminum slabs, might not be the obvious first buyer for Faceshift, a Swiss startup that makes motion-capture tech used in Star Wars. But when you consider how its software can be applied to augmented reality, things get a lot more interesting. As originally reported by MacRumors and now confirmed by…

Find Out If That Beer Is Crap or Not Using This Augmented Reality App

It’s being called Shazam for beer. Tech in Asia is reporting on Letsee, a startup in Korea, that just released a smartphone app of the same name that lets you learn more about any beer in front of you using augmented reality. Simply hold up your phone’s camera to a bottle or can label, and…

Your Forearm Could Soon Morph Into an Augmented Reality Keyboard

Has texting worn your thumbs to the nub? Help is on the way: Japanese electronics giant NEC is introducing new wearables that project an augmented reality keyboard onto your arm. NEC announced the innovation, called ARmKeypad, earlier this week. Here’s how it works: Slip on special glasses and a special smartwatch. With the glasses on,…

Project X Lets You Fight HoloLens Aliens In Your Living Room, And It’s Freaking Unreal

Well, this is it. The day all my dreams came true. I started out playing 2D side-scrollers in mall arcades in the 1980s, but I’ll soon be able to fight holographic robots bursting through my living room walls using my handheld blaster that’s a wearable hologram. WTF. Today at Microsoft’s October 2015 event in New…

Disney Has Invented 3D Coloring Books

With its Color Alive line, Crayola was the first company to merge coloring books and apps so kids could bring their on-page creations to life. But Disney Research is taking that idea one step further by letting kids see a coloring book character move in 3D while they’re still coloring it. It’s all made possible…

Put a HoloLens in the Classroom and I’ll Happily Go Back to School

Though they’re often being lumped together, Microsoft’s HoloLens headset is a very different beast to the Oculus Rift. Whereas the Rift wants to transport you to a whole other virtual reality world, Microsoft’s augmented reality driven HoloLens wants to invade your real world. And that gives it a far wider potential for educational application. To…

Microsoft’s Latest Quest Into Digital Worlds Could Help Robots “See”

Microsoft really wants to blur the line between the digital and real worlds. While HoloLens can stick humans in a bizarro universe filled with holograms and Minecraft blocks, a new program could eventually help robots and self-driving cars better “see” their surroundings. It’s called SemanticPaint, and it’s a new project by the Microsoft Research team.…

Microsoft’s HoloLens Has a Huge Flaw That Won’t Be Solved By Launch

Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda is one of the men in charge of HoloLens, a headset that lets you see virtual objects as if they existed in the real world. At E3 2015, he told me a bit about what we can expect from Microsoft’s holographic computer at launch—and admitted that one key issue will still need…

I Played Minecraft With Microsoft’s HoloLens, And It Was Pretty Awesome

When Microsoft said you’d be able to make Minecraft worlds appear in your living room with its new HoloLens headset, perhaps you squealed in glee. Or perhaps you wrote it off as smoke and mirrors—not reality. Guess what? I just played it. Everything you saw on stage is real. See this? It exists. I played…

A Holographic Halo 5 Soldier Just Briefed Me Inside Microsoft’s HoloLens

No, I didn’t get to play Halo 5 in virtual reality. I wish. But I sure as heck just stepped into a sci-fi video game dreamland at E3 2015, thanks to Microsoft’s amazing HoloLens. Getting briefed for a mission by a holographic soldier? Cross that off the bucket list. My first stop at this year’s…

Want to know more about the mysterious Magic Leap and its plan to make virtual objects appear in the real world? Watch this fireside chat with three of the company’s leaders, including Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson. [MIT Tech Review]

Hands-On: Google’s Project Tango Is Now Sized for Smartphones

Google’s Project Tango is amazing, but it’s taking its sweet time making it to market. This crazy alien head of a camera could change all that. Qualcomm and Google just teamed up to shrink it down to a size suitable for your pocket. You’re looking at the Project Tango Smartphone Development Platform, coming later this…

Oculus Will Soon Be Able to Pull Real World Details into VR

The Oculus Rift VR headset lets you see into another world—but not your own. It’s not like Microsoft’s HoloLens, where you interact with 3D objects in your world. At least, not yet. Oculus just bought Surreal Vision, a startup dedicated to pulling the real world into VR. Surreal Vision specializes in something called “real-time 3D…

These Augmented Reality Hands Are Giving Me Nightmares

Evolution decided that humans should have five digits on the end of each limb. Not four. Not six. Certainly not five little hands attached to one big hand. But thanks to this art/technology/torture installation, some people got to experience what would’ve happened if Darwin screwed up. Augmented Hand Series (v.2) was a project developed by…