For the past several years, Magic Leap’s augmented reality device has been fervently anticipated due to the various claims made about the company’s technology. However, as 2017 ends, the startup has yet to unveil a product, though a new report today details one app that showcases Magic Leap’s capabilities.
While ARCore made its first big consumer debut with AR Stickers on the Pixel and Pixel 2 this week, Google announced today that its original augmented reality project is shutting down. Tango will no longer be supported next year and given the advantages of ARCore, this moving is not all too surprising.
At its Developer Conference today, Samsung revealed a partnership with Google to bring ARCore to its lineup of Galaxy devices. The SDK launched with support on the Galaxy S8 in August, but today marks a formal announcement and commitment to Google’s augmented reality platform.
Since Apple announced ARKit in June, the three-year-old Tango has been cited as the less successful mobile AR competitor due to devices requiring special lenses and sensors. However, Google today unveiled its real competing platform for augmented reality on existing Android devices without the need for any extra hardware.
For this year’s Ramadan, Google added a number of convenient holiday-specific features to their various services. The latest is a neat web app that leverages augmented reality to help users find what direction they should pray in.
For the past year, Magic Leap has been widely assumed a possible “next big thing” in the tech startup world partly thanks to investments from big players like Google and splashy marketing videos. It now appears that some of those demos were made by a special effects company and that the first consumer product may not be all too different from currently available devices, like Microsoft’s HoloLens.
The Information details all of this and more in a massive new report about the highly-secretive company, and even had a chance to speak to former employees and Magic Leap’s current CEO Rony Abovitz.
A Google I/O 2014 attendee wearing a Project Tango/Cardboard hybrid
A report from Recode a few days ago said that a project in Google X to create a “high-end standalone” VR headset was recently cancelled in favor of more focus on Android — and, specifically, the Mountain View company’s new Daydream platform. Now, another report (via Engadget) says that Google is indeed still working on a standalone headset, albeit one “that blurs the line between virtual reality and augmented reality.”
Update 7/6: Pokémon GO is now available via the Play Store for those in the US. Click here to view the listing and download.
Update: In a statement, the Pokémon Company tells US and Japanese customers to “please wait for a while” for the formal launch.
After a brief field test in May, Pokémon GO is now available on Android. The mixed augmented reality game made in partnership with Ingress-makers Niantic Labs allows users to collect, train, and battle Pokémon characters in the real world. The game is still rolling out on the Play Store and might initially only be available in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
Magic Leap isn’t part of Google, but Google put enough money — more than $500 million — into the startup early on that it might not be around if not for the help of the Mountain View firm. So far, Magic Leap has been amazingly secretive in its progress toward developing the next generation of augmented reality and mixed reality — so much so that almost any glimpse into the company’s projects is notable.
Today, the company has announced that it is working with LucasFilm and ILMxLAB to build immersive Star Wars experiences based on its tech…
In 2014, Google led a $542 million investment in Magic Leap. Even though the augmented reality startup is now valued at $4.5 billion, there are still no concrete details about its technology. A patent filing (via QZ) today, however, might just provide the first glimpse into what Magic Leap’s headset actually looks like.
From new Moto devices to Project Tango, Lenovo will have a full lineup of announcements this Thursday at Tech World 2016. Now, a new render has surfaced highlighting the thinness of the Moto Z, while a Bluetooth certification points to low-end devices also set to carry the Moto name.
Google-backed Magic Leap has uploaded a fresh demo of its head-mounted VR (technically AR) on YouTube, and gives us hope that Microsoft’s HoloLens won’t have the augmented reality market all to itself.
Snapchat has been on a roll lately introducing bigger and more creative updates to their social network. From introducing custom geofilters, to a massive overhaul in their chat system, they show no signs of slowing down. Today’s update takes video interactions a step further by allowing you to “pin” stickers and emojis to moving objects in video. The update will be rolling out to Android today and soon to iOS.
According to a new report from The Information, behind closed doors Google is much more interested in augmented reality than it is in virtual reality. Google of course has publicly marketed its Cardboard VR product heavily, but that’s apparently not the end-goal for the company — augmented reality is.
Virtual reality is cool, but augmented reality is more practical in day-to-day usage. Microsoft’s HoloLens and Magic Leap are currently the most well-known examples of AR. There are productivity use cases for it, but there are also many fun gaming applications. One developer made an app that turns an Android Wear watch when viewed through a camera into a game.
UploadVR reports that Magic Leap has poached Jeff Gattis, the global marketing head of HTC’s Vive, a virtual reality headset expected to ship by the end of the year.
Comments made by Gattis add fuel to speculation that Magic Leap’s own VR headset is close to launch, but also suggest that it is significantly more advanced than the HTC product he’s been pushing for the past eight months …
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Google and Intel have developed what looks like the ultimate augmented reality smartphone, combining Google’s Project Tango tech to map and track 3D environments with Intel’s RealSense camera sensor, which isolates and scans 3D objects within those environments.
Engadget reports that the two companies have so far produced a developer prototype of the smartphone, with a consumer device expected to be released further down the line. While there will doubtless be serious applications for the technology, it’s augmented reality gaming that is likely to get the most attention …
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Like other megalithic technology giants including Facebook and even Xerox once upon a time, Google (Alphabet?) has many a skunkworks lab deep inside the halls of the company tasked with thinking creatively about execution and exploring non-traditional concepts, and which doesn’t have to worry about revenue or reaching the masses. One of those labs released three new apps for Android today, all of which center around using the device camera and sensors in (unsurprisingly) unique ways.
Google invested $542 million in virtual reality startup Magic Leap last year, and the group is reportedly working on putting together an augmented reality headset capable of displaying extremely realistic images directly onto the user’s retina. Now, Magic Leap has shared a video (which they were planning on sharing during a TED talk, but were unable to), and it gives us a little glimpse of what the group has been working on…
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPlaa1xhX4s
Augmented reality specialist Metaio has put together an interesting proof-of-concept video illustrating how vehicle manuals could soon be a thing of the past, with Glass providing all the instruction needed …
The demo is an extremely simple one (and anyone who needs to be told that step 1 of filling the washer fluid is opening the bonnet probably shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of a car), but it’s easy to see how the same approach could be used for the most technical of operations by a car mechanic.
Metaio previously put together an iOS app for Audi with a similar approach.
You can find some other Glass ideas that caught our eye linked in the opening sentence here – with this one (a surgeon allowing colleagues to watch an operation) coming along shortly afterwards.
It’s not the best video in the world in terms of production values, but the techniques being demonstrated are pretty cool. For example, asking Glass the height of the Washington Monument when looking at it and being shown a visual scale overlayed on the real thing, translation of a sign on a sidewalk and overlaying a restaurant with star rating and opening times …
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Patents recently published by the United States Patent & Trademark Office (via Engadget) show Google successfully patented at least the ornamental design of its “Project Glass” augmented reality glasses unveiled last month. It does not look exactly like the prototypes shown off in the concept videos, nor the pair worn by Sergey Brin, but we expect the design will be altered somewhat before it eventually hits the market.
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Oakley could soon give Google’s Project Glass a run for its money.
The eyewear maker told Bloomberg that it is developing technology for integrating smartphone elements into its products. The science is only in the preliminary stage, however, as Oakley’s Chief Executive Officer Colin Baden (picture, left) would not even validate plans to launch such spectacles. He did explain his company’s stance on the project, though, while detailing how the public is yearning for a heads-up display:
“As an organization, we’ve been chasing this beast since 1997,” explained Baden. “Ultimately, everything happens through your eyes, and the closer we can bring it to your eyes, the quicker the consumer is going to adopt the platform.”
Colin then described a few features he would like to see in the product, such as voice-controlled display information in conjunction with a smartphone via Bluetooth. The company actually has a few patents in place that detail its vision (available here, and pictured above). Oakley’s augmented-reality glasses would obviously not be cheap for consumers— especially because its initial target audience consists of athletes and eventually the U.S. military:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/-sSsRIhVYB4]
Many Google Glasses parody videos are swirling around the Web, but two Israeli-based filmmakers decided to up the ante with a take on “Battlefield 5.”
Nadav Pessach and Uzi Mor created the video above and hosted it on the “There is a Canal” YouTube channel. It features “Battlefield 5” in a much-idealized version of how some gamers expect Project Glass to one-day change the gaming industry. The Battlefield franchise is a series of FPS video games developed by the Swedish company EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts.
