Author: defaultwptest_0plels

At first glance, it may not sound like there’s much value in doing a crossword puzzle in augmented reality, but The New York Times has managed to revamp the pastime as an immersive game. On Tuesday, the media company published its December 22 mini-crossword puzzle via the Spark AR platform for Instagram as Shattered Crossword. Don’t Miss: New York Times Debuts Location-Based Air Pollution AR Visualization for Apple iOS Devices Rather than view the puzzle in AR and fill in the blanks, the potential letters are splintered and scattered about in the space above the puzzle, with the pieces of… more

The economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt in practically every business sector. Now, as we look back at the top augmented reality investments of 2020, the AR industry has been no exception. While the overall dollar value of this year’s top 10 investments was higher than any year since we began tracking AR funding in 2017, the results are a bit skewed by an astronomical funding round at the top of the 2020 list. • Don’t Miss: Next Reality’s 30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality for 2020 After discounting the top funding round of each year, the average funding round in… more

Help me, George Clooney. You’re my only hope. If that mash-up of cultural references doesn’t make sense, it will momentarily. To promote The Midnight Sky, the new film starring George Clooney and dropping via Netflix on December 23 (Happy Festivus), the streaming studio is launching an augmented reality experience that gives consumers the ability to record and send holographic messages, not unlike the iconic plea for help sent by Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope. Don’t Miss: Netflix Film ‘Anon’ Paints Dystopian View of Augmented Reality That Obliterates Privacy The web-based AR… more

The team over at Spatial isn’t done innovating its way through augmented reality in 2020. Just days after adding a mobile option to its groundbreaking Spatial virtual collaboration product, the company is releasing Tele, a new app geared toward more casual, AR-powered video chats. • Don’t Miss: Next Reality’s 30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality for 2020 The Tele app uses the same easy avatar creation process as Spatial, which can take an existing face photo on your phone and wrap it around an avatar. Alternatively, you can simply snap a selfie and use that photo for your avatar. Once… more

You won’t have to ask Santa for holiday-themed augmented reality experiences, because practically any social and shopping app that offers AR effects has them available now. Despite the relative ubiquity, a new set of seasonal AR Lenses in Snapchat (iOS | Android) stand out, as they also showcase the app’s powerful machine learning chops. Don’t Miss: Next Reality Snap Spectacles 3 Holiday Giveaway! For example, the Family Portrait Lens leverages the aging and gender-shifting effects from the Time Machine and Gender Swap Lenses to create a virtual family based on your likeness, with yourself… more

Google, you have something that I want. You may think you have some idea of what you are in possession of, but you do not. In a few moments, it will be mine…and it can be yours, too, dear readers. That something, of course, is Baby Yoda…er, Grogu…from the Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian. But you won’t have to fight Mando or Moff Gideon to obtain him. Don’t Miss: Star Wars Baby Yoda Unofficially Comes to Magic Leap via This Developer Experiment Now, if you search Google for either his colloquial label or his proper canon name, or even “The Child” as he was previously referred… more

This year, as part of the Next Reality 30, in partnership with Snap, we’re spotlighting an up-and-coming innovator in augmented reality. Specifically, we were searching for an independent developer or creator who embodies the bleeding edge spirit of AR and its ability to leverage machine learning. This year’s honoree is Aidan Wolf. • Don’t Miss: Next Reality’s 30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality for 2020 When Magic Leap first made its way into the hands of developers, an informal posse known as the Leap Squad quickly formed around the platform. One of its members was Aidan Wolf, an indie… more

The virtual collaboration tool known as Spatial has consistently been one of our favorites due to its ability to leverage high-end augmented reality headsets to more easily facilitate remote meetings. Well, now the product just took a massive leap forward by allowing anyone with a smartphone to join in on these virtual meetings. Don’t Miss: Next Reality’s 30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality for 2020 On Tuesday, Spatial rolled out iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android versions of the Spatial app. So now, a group of users can meet across devices including the HoloLens, the Magic Leap 1, a… more

The year 2020 was a pivotal span of time during which the word “virtual” took on a brand new meaning. Instead of referring to VR or augmented reality, the term was hijacked to describe meeting across long distances through a variety of software tools, most often through video. But while the dominance of the term as a way to describe video meetings has been irritating to some within the AR and VR space, I would argue that this is exactly the kind of mainstreaming shift that AR needed to begin to enter the minds of those who have never truly investigated immersive computing. Although the story… more

In recent weeks, Google managed to capitalize on the hype surrounding the Star Wars streaming series The Mandalorian with an AR app that was not only exclusive to Android but also available only for 5G-equipped devices. Now, Google has partnered with Red Bull to launch an AR experience that syncs with The Last Ascent, a documentary film about Canadian climber Will Gadd’s 2014 and 2020 expeditions on Mt. Kilimanjaro and the impacts of climate change observed between the trips. While the experience runs on ARKit-capable iPhones and iPads as well as Android devices that support ARCore, in this… more