Hot Augmented Reality News Posts
News: Bioimplants Will Bring Augmented Reality Straight to Your Brain
We're already glimpsing the future when we look at mixed reality through a headset, but is the real evolution of this technology something that will exist as part of our bodies? As intense as that may sound, TechCrunch's Jay Donovan offers compelling reasons why it's not such a crazy idea:
News: Pokémon Go Significantly Changes the Classic Game, for Better or Worse
Pokémon Go takes the popular franchise and brings it into the real world through augmented reality, allowing us to play the game while exploring our physical environments at the same time. It doesn't just put pocket monsters into a more realistic context, but it changes the game in some major ways that may delight some players... and upset others.
News: The Hololens Could Change How Buildings Are Designed & Built
With developers already figuring out how to use the HoloLens for home improvement tasks, it's no surprise that the device has greater applications in construction. Tech blog Digital Trends points out that holograms are a natural evolution of the blueprint, and several other aspects of construction work.
News: Lenovo's New Tango-Powered Phab2 Pro Marks the Rise of a New Wave of Mixed Reality
Augmented reality began on smartphones but technical limitations have prevented further development. Google's Tango (formerly Project Tango) aimed to change all that, and with Lenovo's help, they now have their first device.
News: Data Mining & Augmented Reality Make for an Alarming Combination
Our future technology has a lot of amazing possibilities, and few have more promise than augmented and mixed reality headsets. But these advancements come with several concerns over privacy, and if we don't understand them, we may lose control of our own data without even knowing.
News: Meta's Latest Mixed Reality Headset Sets a High Bar
Microsoft enjoyed a few months in the spotlight after releasing the developer version of the very first mixed reality (MR) headset, but now we're starting to see the competition jump in.
News: How to Try Out the Microsoft HoloLens (& Other Reality-Altering Headsets) Near You
Mixed reality (MR) feels like an amazing, almost mind-blowing futuristic technology—but only once you've experienced it for yourself. Words, images, and even videos simply cannot describe the experience in full. If you want to really peer into the future and experience MR for yourself, you can sign up and just go in many cities.
News: HoloTube Brings YouTube to the HoloLens, but It Needs to Be Way Better
HoloTube, a new unofficial YouTube app for the Microsoft HoloLens, brings a whole bunch of new content to the mixed reality headset. While it's nice to have, the experience feels focused on quantity, not quality. HoloTube has a simple interface most people will recognize. You get a page of video categories, and as you drill down through each option you're presented with videos to watch. You can view regular, flat videos on the wall (or wherever you like)—which has its merits.
News: Magic Leap's Mysterious Mixed Reality Headset Might Cover Your Entire Face
We've experienced the HoloLens, learned a lot about the Meta 2, but almost nobody knows exactly what to expect out of Magic Leap's mixed reality headset. Thanks to a patent dug up by Quartz (which we saw first on Tech Insider), we now might have a better idea.
News: 'See Through' Walls with This HoloLens Stud-Marking App
The HoloLens can do some pretty crazy things such as create a robot invasion in your walls, but it can also help you do simple stuff, like hanging frames, paintings, or anything else on those walls—after you repair them from the robot attack, of course.
How To: Use Your Smartphone's Camera to Instantly Translate Anything
If you're standing in a foreign city, surrounded by signage in a language you don't understand, you won't suddenly be able to read it. But with a clever feature in Google's Translate app, your smartphone can.
News: Microsoft Brings Outlook to the HoloLens, Rounding Out the Office Suite
One of the more surprising omissions from the HoloLens' original app selection was email. You could write a word document or make a spreadsheet but only email through the browser. While not a major encumbrance, Microsoft's addition of Outlook makes the whole office experience feel complete.
News: The HoloLens Lets You Watch TV in a Whole New Way
Are there any benefits to watching a movie in a holographic mixed reality headset, or should you just stick with your TV? It's not as cut and dried as you might think. While TVs have some advantages, so does the virtual screen of a Microsoft HoloLens.
News: The First Meta 2 Mixed Reality Headsets Will Begin Shipping in Two Weeks
Microsoft's enjoyed being the only mixed reality headset on the block for a little while, but the Meta 2 intends to join the party very soon. According to UploadVR, in a couple of weeks they'll begin shipping alpha versions of their headset with improved hand tracking.
Beyond Snapchat: Test Out New Looks with ModiFace's Augmented Reality Apps
Augmented reality has a variety of applications, but lately the face has been a major point of concentration for many companies. We're all pretty familiar with face swapping by now, but ModiFace employs similar technologies for more practical purposes.
News: Microsoft's HoloLens Is Going to Transform How We Do Work
Mixed reality headsets have limited hardware capabilities and naturally imprecise interfaces. While that works just fine for games and entertainment, can they actually function as a tool for productivity?
News: Microsoft's Windows Holographic Is Breaking Free from the HoloLens
Not content with bringing the first untethered mixed reality headset to market, Microsoft wants to expand their Windows Holographic operating system beyond HoloLens into vastly more robust technologies.
How To: Control Your Microsoft Hololens with These Cortana Voice Controls
When Microsoft release an update to the HoloLens Development Edition at the end of May, there were a bunch of cool new features added in. Among them: New voice controls that make working in the HoloLens operating system much easier.
News: HoloLens' First Update Adds Voice Commands, Multitasking, & Much More
Microsoft released a robust version of the HoloLens when shipping the developer kits, but there's still lots of room left to grow. Today, they've released the first update to Windows Holographic, the operating system of the HoloLens, with a whole bunch of cool new features like voice commands and app multitasking.
News: Watch Mountains & Rivers Come to Life with This Sand-Based Map
Most sandboxes wait for children on a playground or the occasional zen garden raking. This one combines light, sand, and depth cameras to create a completely malleable topographical map you can alter with a brush of your hand.
News: The HoloLens Might Have a Small Field of View, but That's Actually a Good Thing
Microsoft's HoloLens is certainly a leap into the future of mixed reality interfaces, but it's not without drawbacks.
How To: Use This App to Test Out Tattoos Before They're Permanent
If you're in the market for a new tattoo, the biggest hurdle to clear is imagining exactly how it's going to look. It's going to be part of your identity for the rest of your life, so you have to make sure it looks just right—or as your mom probably told you, "Think of what it's going to look like when you're 60."
News: What Augmented Reality Needs to Come of Age
Augmented reality (AR) holds much promise for how we'll interact with technology in the future, but we still have many hurdles to clear before that dream fully comes to fruition.
News: Augmented Reality Turns Rock Climbing into a Real-World Video Game
Augmented reality (AR) generally exists through the lens of our smartphones as information layered on top of what the camera sees, but it doesn't have to. Developer Jon Cheng worked with an indoor climbing facility in Somerville, Massachussetts, called Brooklyn Boulders, to turn rock climbing into a real-world video game where participants compete in a time trial to hit virtual markers on the wall.
News: Sign Up Now to Join the Exciting Pokémon Hunt in Augmented Reality
Want to actually catch 'em all? Pokémon GO has long-teased the opportunity to hunt for Pokémon in the real world through augmented reality, but few have had the opportunity to actually see it in action.
News: New Lenovo Phone Augments Reality from the Palm of Your Hand
Lenovo is teaming up with Google to debut the first Project Tango smartphone, which uses 3D sensors to map the world around it. The Tango phone will be able to give directions without the need for GPS, and it can augment reality to bring things like dinosaurs and cars into your environment.
News: Your First Look at the HoloLens Development Edition
We received our HoloLens Development Edition from Microsoft, and well, we're pretty giddy. But before we set everything up, we wanted to give you all a look at just what you get for $3,000. Let's get the plastic off and pull this baby out. And what do we have here? A fabric-laden orb of sorts. Alright, alright, enough of the box. Unzip the casing you get to the real deal. There's a hole, let's see what's under it. Waiting for us was the instruction manual, a cleaning cloth, charging cable and...
News: What We Know About Magic Leap's Amazing Tech So Far
Virtual reality headsets are all the rage these days, and among the menagerie of tech companies gunning for the top spot, there's one mysterious startup that is ahead of the game—Magic Leap—and you can tell just by watching their latest demo video of their product in action.
News: The Future of Gaming Is Robots Blasting Through Your Living Room Walls
Developers across the U.S. and Canada have started getting their augmented reality headset packages from Microsoft, and so far, everyone's raving about one gaming experience that shatters all doubts of just what the HoloLens can do... RoboRaid.
News: This Is the Crazy Set Up Magic Leap Uses to Study Your Face
Magic Leap has some seriously awesome tech behind their augmented reality vision, and has made it a point to add a ton of adrenaline into the industry with a revolutionary focus on 3D layering. Today, they gave the public another glance at how they go about it. The image above displays the complete setup that Magic Leap uses to accurately capture someone's entire facial structure. The associated caption to this image reads: "This is where we study the 22 bones & 43 muscles of the face & head."
News: Microsoft HoloLens Makes Virtual Teleportation a Reality
Logan's Run is one of my favorite movies of all time. The dialog is cheesy, the set design and special effects are wonky, and the main villain looks like he was conceived and built by an eighth grader in shop class—oh, and his name is Box.
HoloLens Feature: Voice Input
Like Gesture Input, Voice Input allows you to act on the focus of your Gaze. However, the commands you can use with Voice Input are only limited by your imagination.
HoloLens Feature: Gesture Input
Gesture Input works hand-in-hand with Gaze Input. If you think of Gaze Input like a mouse cursor, Gesture Input is how you "click" in HoloLens—which Microsoft calls "tapping." It's kind of like a touchpad, only in 3D.
HoloLens Feature: Spatial Sound
The HoloLens's visuals are justifiably getting most of the pre-launch hype, but sound plays just as important of a role in creating immersion in your mixed-reality.
HoloLens Feature: Spatial Mapping
Once you've designed some holograms with HoloLens, you'll need to get them to interact with the environment. That's where Spatial Mapping comes in. There are five basic purposes for using HoloLens's Spatial Mapping with your app:
How To: Buy a Microsoft HoloLens
Microsoft's HoloLens project is shaping up to be the forerunner of augmented reality. With jaw-dropping features that would allow you to bring entire football games into your living room and control software with your eyes, there's plenty to be excited about with the upcoming AR headset. Up until now, HoloLens has been seen as potential vaporware, considering that the technology it brings to the table is so futuristic that some folks have thought it wouldn't be possible any time soon. But a r...
News: With HoloLens Your Gaze Is Your Mouse
HoloLens users will have a handful of ways to interact with the mixed-reality, holographic world. Gaze Input lets the user control a cursor in their field of vision. In other words, it's essentially a mouse that you control by looking around.
News: Face Swapping Is Just Nuts
By now, you've likely used or have seen friends and family use Face Swap Live on their phones. It's a fun little app for iOS (and soon to be Android) that harnesses current tech to—you guessed it—swap faces.
News: Microsoft Is About to Revolutionize How We Watch Sports at Home
Obviously this is just a teaser, and who knows how soon we'll see something like this in real life, but just go ahead and watch the video first before you continue reading.
News: Images Surface of the New Google Glass
A new model of Google Glass has appeared on the FCC website, along with a handful of high-res pictures.