Month: July 2021

Already among the leaders in AR development tools via its Unreal Engine, Epic Games has added another tanky weapon to its arsenal. On Wednesday, the company announced its acquisition of Sketchfab, itself one of the leading repositories of 3D content for AR and VR experiences. Don’t Miss: Unreal Engine Maker Epic Games Lands $1.25 Billion Investment to Drive Future of Gaming & AR Sketchfab will continue to operate as an independent company, which includes maintaining compatibility and support for other platforms, including Unity, a chief competitor to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. In addition… more

The legal battle between Epic Games and augmented reality startup Nreal isn’t cooling off anytime soon. In a new twist, the Chinese startup, while defending itself against Epic’s lawsuit, has decided to file its own lawsuit against the games and software platform maker. • Don’t Miss: Epic Games Restarts Lawsuit vs. Nreal as Settlement Talks Collapse If you haven’t been keeping score, here’s the basic chain of events, which was first exposed to the public when Next Reality broke the story in January 2019. In late December of 2018, Epic Games quietly lobbed its first legal volley at Nreal… more

Snapchat parent company Snap has opened up its war chest to acquire yet another company that will play a role in its augmented reality ecosystem. This week, Snap confirmed its acquisition of Vertebrae, an AR and 3D e-commerce startup with offices in Los Angeles and Austin, for an undisclosed amount. Don’t Miss: What Snap’s Voca.ai Acquisition Could Mean for Snapchat & Spectacles — Virtual Voice Assistants Meet Augmented Reality The deal, first reported by The Verge and confirmed by Next Reality via a Snap spokesperson, will allow Vertebrae’s team of 50 employees to continue development on… more

From the front lines of mainstreaming augmented reality smartglasses comes the latest update from Snap and its Spectacles wearable. This time the demonstration of the device’s powers comes from a more creative arts perspective. • Don’t Miss: AR Snapshots — Dive into Shark Week with These Snapchat AR Lenses New York-based poet and computer programmer Zach Lieberman managed to get his hands on a pair of Spectacles and decided to translate his words into immersive elements using Lens Studio. The results of the experiment can be seen in a new video posted on Monday which shows Lieberman… more

After a postponement of the Summer Olympics for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tokyo is set to host the games this summer, despite a surge in cases in the city. Nonetheless, the games seem set to go on, and USA Today has published two AR experiences highlighting two new sports, skateboarding and sports climbing, making their Olympics debut. Don’t Miss: USA Today Teams Up with 8th Wall to Launch AR Basketball Game for March Madness The AR experiences feature American professional skateboarder Tom Schaar and Team USA climber Kyra Condie, with a 3D scan of each athlete anchored in the… more

A pair of properties from the soon-to-merge Warner Media and Discovery companies chose different platforms for their augmented reality marketing, with Warner film Space Jam: A New Legacy opting to go with Facebook and Discovery Channel publishing an AR experience through Snapchat. Other brands, Virgin Galactic and Asics, jumped into the AR content fray this week via mobile apps and NFTs. In addition, while Google brought its Google Meet video platform to Google Glass, Rokid and DigiLens unveiled new developments in the smartglasses segment. AT&T Taps Facebook to Promote ‘Space Jam: A New… more

Due to the apparent lackluster adoption of its Explorer Edition, it can be easy to forget that Google Glass still exists as an enterprise product. But Google hasn’t forgotten, as it has been working on bringing its Google Meet video conferencing platform to Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2. Don’t Miss: Google Just Made It Easier to Get Your Hands on Glass Enterprise Edition 2 On Friday, Google made the open beta of Meet on Glass available to Google Workspace (the new brand name for G-Suite) customers after launching the closed beta last year. With Meet on Glass, Google Glass users can… more

The remake of the Warner Bros. classic animation meets live-action movie Space Jam, this time starring LeBron James instead of Michael Jordan, hits theaters today. And while bringing Bugs Bunny into your real world surroundings is still Hollywood fantasy, thanks to augmented reality there’s now a way to get the same effect as seen in the movie. • Don’t Miss: Looney Tunes Antics Jump from Screen to Real World with Augmented Reality Experiment There are actually a couple of ways to teleport the characters from Space Jam: A New Legacy into your surroundings. The most accessible way is to use… more

Shark Week, which debuted in 1988 as a week of programming on the Discovery Channel dedicated to the titular predatory fish, has grown into a cultural beast of its own. At Next Reality, we can think of no better way to commemorate the week than to try out some shark-themed AR Lenses via Snapchat. Searching for “shark” in Lens Explorer returns no shortage of options, but these separate themselves from the pack (or shiver, as that is what a group of sharks is called)… Don’t Miss: AR Snapshots: Snapchat Lens Shows Us What Our Fav Live-Action Movies Would Look Like from Pixar Animation Look… more

When it comes to the future of AR smartglasses, DigiLens has one word for you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics. On Thursday, the waveguide maker and its strategic investment and production partners Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC) will begin producing the first-ever waveguides made of plastic instead of glass for use in AR smartglasses and headsets. Don’t Miss: DigiLens’ Vision of Cheaper Smartglasses Becomes Clearer with Crystal Reference Design Using a proprietary photopolymer and holographic contact copy manufacturing process, DigiLens’ plastic waveguides perform… more