If $200 was too much for you to get in on some Star Wars augmented reality action, Best Buy is now selling refurbished Star Wars Jedi Challenges sets for $79.99 and new ones for $99.99.
In the nascent AR/VR race, any release news is big news. For augmented reality, those invested in the new technology eagerly await the release of Microsoft's Hololens and any inkling of information that comes with it. If you're one of those folks, you're in luck, as new information has just been disclosed about one of Microsoft's partners on the project, Lenovo, and their Hololens; including its release date and price.
Microsoft has the HoloLens and Google has their money on Magic Leap (as well as their own Tango and Cardboard, among others), but we've heard next to nothing about how Apple plans to enter the virtual/augmented/mixed reality space. A new patent offers some clues.
The more impressive demonstrations of the capabilities of augmented reality add another dimension to what we see in the real world.
If you're an Apple user and want an untethered virtual reality system, you're currently stuck with Google Cardboard, which doesn't hold a candle to the room scale VR provided by the HTC Vive (a headset not compatible with Macs, by the way). But spatial computing company Occipital just figured out how to use their Structure Core 3D Sensor to provide room scale VR to any smartphone headset—whether it's for an iPhone or Android.
The Oculus Rift's virtual experiences become a little less immersive when you're barely moving in a chair with a headset on, playing on a gamepad—but you don't have to accept that reality anymore.
Another day, another company hopping on the virtual reality bandwagon. Today, it's fast food behemoth McDonald's, which is testing limited edition Happy Meal boxes that you can turn into a VR headset by punching out a couple holes and tearing along a few perforated seams. The resulting headset is a lot like Google Cardboard, with the lingering scent of fry grease.
Despite funding difficulties that forced Meta to place employees on temporary leave in September, the augmented reality headset maker is reminding enterprise companies that it remains a viable option for visualizing and working with 3D design models.
Some of the products I have been looking forward to seeing the most during CES 2017 has been the upcoming Windows Holographic virtual reality headsets. These are VR headset that will run a version of the Windows Holographic platform, which will allow users to have a similar experience as the HoloLens with a mixed reality environment. Of the six headsets that could have possibly made it to CES, five had shown up. Unfortunately, most of them are behind glass.
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.
If there is one constant in currently available AR headsets, it's that, for a quality experience, they'll carry a high price tag. Price is one of the reasons these devices are mostly marketed towards enterprise customers for now.
Shanghai-based Realmax is introducing the crowds at CES to the Realmax Qian, an augmented reality headset capable of a field of view (FoV) that topples anything available on the market today.
The Force was awakened in many a household on Christmas morning this year, as evidenced by numerous recipients of newly unwrapped Star Wars: Jedi Challenges systems sharing their first lightsaber battles in augmented reality on social media.
The Meta 2 developer kit has finally begun shipping! Gary Garcia, the senior director of customer success at Meta, just sent out an email that they are shipping out to the first round of preorder customers. Waves will be building from there, up to far higher manufacturing rates near the end of Q1 of 2017.
Most popular virtual reality headsets, like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, require a tethered connection to the computer and that imposes some obvious restrictions on how much we can move in our space. We'd all prefer a simpler, untethered option, and Intel wants to provide just that.
How do you safely store your augmented, virtual, or mixed reality headset when you're not using it? Cybust hopes you're willing to shell out $89 to display it like a sculpture around your house.
Augmented, mixed, and virtual reality are all a little bit different, but as many expect—including Metavision—the continuum of our next realities will converge and give us one head-mounted display (HMD) platform that can do it all. If Vrvana, a Canadian company building AR and VR headsets, succeeds, that convergence could begin as early as next year.
One of the leading chipmakers for smartphones is getting ready to announce a new processor made specifically for augmented and virtual reality headsets.
A Series B round of funding, totaling $30 million, will enable Helsinki-based startup Varjo to launch its industrial-grade augmented and virtual reality headset capable of "human-eye resolution" before the end of the year.
When the Super Bowl airs, every other TV network puts on reruns because no one wants to face that juggernaut for ratings. The launch of a new iPhone is the Super Bowl of the tech world, with the launch of the iPhone X being the biggest one yet.
With the release of the HoloLens, Microsoft has put itself in both a great position while giving the competition a serious target to aim for. This is normally the case for anyone that is first to the market with a new idea, and now we've finally got a good competitor HoloLens coming. Stereolabs, a company known for its impressive 2K stereo camera, will be entering the mixed reality head-mounted display space with a Developers Kit as soon as early-2017.
When you think about consumer VR headsets, you either imagine a computer-tethered powerhouse like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, or something portable yet limited that utilizes your smartphone like Google Cardboard. Somehow, we haven't seen much in-between, but the Idealens aims to fill that gap.
Rumors around Apple's not-so-secret development of an AR/VR headset have been prevalent throughout the young year, but the latest round of reports move speculation of the device into a clearer view.
Based on recent reports, we've got a pretty clear picture of what to expect from Apple's rumored augmented reality headset expected to arrive next year, but the outlook is more opaque concerning its consumer-grade AR smartglasses.
In their first head-to-head major contract clash, Microsoft has emerged victorious over Magic Leap, as the US Army has awarded a $480 million contract to the HoloLens maker.
On Tuesday, original design manufacturer (ODM) Flex used the CES spotlight to help introduce a smartglasses reference design aimed at companies interested in bringing their own enterprise AR headsets to market.
Today, anyone with a compatible PC can download the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and experience Windows Mixed Reality.
At the 2017 Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara today, smartglasses maker Epson introduced two new augmented reality headsets from its Moverio line of products.
Google announced several new devices (as well as updates to existing devices) that will take advantage of the company's augmented and virtual reality platforms.
A new contender has entered the mixed reality ring. San Fransisco-based Occipital has just released an "Explorer Edition" of Bridge—an iPhone-based mixed and virtual reality headset that uses their popular Structure Sensor. At a fraction of the cost of a HoloLens developers kit, this could be a place many curious people use to find their NextReality.
Samsung has shown off its new smartwatch, the Gear S, and its two new Notes, the Note 4 and the Note Edge at IFA 2014, but it had one more trick up its sleeve.
The process of trying out new augmented reality and virtual reality hardware is as personal as it gets. Bottom line, if you can't directly try these immersive devices on, it's difficult to really understand the benefits they can bring to your life and work.
We watched the first piece of public-facing content Magic Leap has released so you don't have to, and, well, you didn't miss much.
It finally happened. Magic Leap has given the world its first glimpse at its debut device, the Magic Leap One Creator Edition.
Three years ago, with VR enthusiasts prepared to throw their money at Oculus to get their hands on the yet-to-be-release Rift headset, Google surprised the audience for Google I/O with Google Cardboard, a seemingly late April Fool's joke that actually jump-started virtual reality.
Intel, the company which is mostly known for creating computer processors, once again showed off their Project Alloy "merged reality" experience, this time during their CES 2017 press conference. Intel's Chief Executive Officer, Brian Krzanich, stated that they will be "productizing" this tech with their partners in the fourth quarter of 2017.
The augmented reality space is no longer about if but when every company and creator will use some kind of immersive device and software to produce and distribute 3D content.
Apple no longer has an exclusive province to LiDAR for the purposes of augmented reality. This week, headset maker Varjo unveiled its new VR-3 and XR-3 headsets, the latter of which includes LiDAR sensors and stereo RGB cameras to enable depth sensing and inside-out tracking of real-world environments for "pass-through" mixed reality experiences.
Using the CES tech conference in Las Vegas as the launch pad, Dell has announced that it's partnering with Meta Company to offer its augmented reality headsets to business customers.
At their event in San Francisco today, Microsoft announced that they have begun accepting pre-orders for Windows Mixed Reality headsets from Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and HP, with the devices arriving on Oct. 17 along with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.
