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The march of Snap to become the world’s augmented reality engine isn’t slowing down. In a new deal announced on Thursday, Snap has revealed that it has signed an agreement to become the software driving Universal Music Group’s (UMG) mobile AR music offerings. • Don’t Miss: Taylor Swift Invites You to Dance to Her Music in Augmented Reality As the home to major artists like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, the Jonas Brothers, Rihanna, Adele, Justin Bieber, and many others, the deal effectively gives Snap an exclusive pipeline into the some of the most popular entertainment content on the… more

While Apple was one of the first to integrate LiDAR into mobile devices for depth sensing, headset maker Varjo has developed a truly remarkable feat with its implementation of the sensor. On Thursday, Varjo introduced Varjo Reality Cloud, a system that uses the LiDAR sensors embedded in its XR-3 device to scan an environment and stream volumetric video of it in real-time, essentially simulating the teleportation of people and spaces. Don’t Miss: Hands-On: Hands-On with Spatial’s Remote Meeting App on Microsoft HoloLens With Varjo Reality Cloud, an XR-3 headset can scan and record an… more

We already know that the US Army will be using its modified HoloLens 2 for special missions, and major businesses are deploying the augmented reality device for enterprise use cases. Nevertheless, despite Microsoft’s mostly business-focused push for the advanced AR device, there are still creative studios using it to expand the boundaries of entertainment. One of the latest is bringing us an immersive trip through time. • Don’t Miss: Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 Makes Primetime Debut on Fox TV Show ‘The Resident’ This month, the National Museum of Natural History (Muséum national d’Histoire… more

Many years ago, when I first traveled to Tokyo, Japan, I was amazed by the contactless IC card turnstiles embedded in the county’s subway system. Well, despite New York City also being a top-tier city, its famed subway system has only recently added contactless payment, and Apple is leading the charge, powered in part by augmented reality. • Don’t Miss: Snap Spectacles Get a New App for Hands-Free Drawing in AR New York’s MTA transit system One Metro New York (OMNY) contactless payment system launched a few years ago and starting adding an Apple Pay option back in 2019. Now that… more

If you thought Snap’s Spectacles were limited to a couple of demos, you haven’t been paying attention. During the initial launch of the augmented reality wearable, the social media giant said that it had seeded Spectacles with a wide range of developers, and now we’re getting the chance to see what another one has done with the AR smartglasses, • Don’t Miss: How to Get a Pair of Snap’s New Spectacles AR Smartglasses Pittsburgh-based AR and VR developer Matthew Hallberg used Snap’s Lens Studio to create a new app for Spectacles that he calls Sketchflow. To demo the app, he takes us on a… more

The makers of arguably the two most important mobile AR apps, Niantic and Snap, both had good news this week, with the former preparing to replicate its success with Pokémon GO for another franchise and the latter notching another popular augmented reality Lens for Snapchat. Meanwhile, leaders of two of the top companies vying to take on consumer-grade AR wearables (Apple and Facebook) tipped their hands ever so slightly this week. In other news, Tencent continues in its role of investing in the AR ecosystem and Looking Glass is showing the world a different take on immersive experiences… more

Ever since Facebook announced its partnership with Luxxotica brand Ray-Ban to produce smartglasses, the augmented reality space has been on high alert awaiting more details. Unfortunately, those details have been scarce, until now. During a session at the Paris Viva Technology conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offers a bit more detail on what the company has planned. • Don’t Miss: Why the Nightmare Scenario of Facebook’s Quest VR Advertisements Is Actually a Win, & Will Ultimately Boost AR The Zuckerberg session followed the opening chat from Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this week… more

The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy. At first glance, the first thing many will point to is the recent history of Facebook and its somewhat rocky path regarding political and social issue ads. And while the company is still working on much-needed fixes, immediately writing off advertisements in VR (and later, augmented reality) as problematic may be an overreaction. Let’s unpack why. • Don’t Miss: Facebook Develops AI That Can Copy Typefaces… more

Over the past decade, China tech giant Tencent has invested in several companies with varying roles in the augmented reality industry. Its latest bet backs a startup with some short-term impact related to the COVID-19 pandemic but more future-focused growth potential in the coming AR smartglasses era. Don’t Miss: Ultraleap Improves Tracking of Two-Handed Interactions with Gemini Software Update According to a Sky News report, Image Frame Investment, Tencent’s venture capital arm, will invest approximately $50 million into UK-based Ultraleap as part of the company’s on-going Series D round… more

For awhile now, Google has offered the ability to translate text through smartphone cameras via Google Translate and Google Lens, with Apple bringing similar technology to iPhones via Live Text.Hold our beers, say AI researchers at Facebook, who have now developed computer vision technology that can handle real-time text translation and then some in augmented reality.Don’t Miss: Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg Talks Immersive Remote Video & AR Smartglasses Following Major Reveals from Snap & GoogleThis week, Praveen Krishnan, a postdoctoral researcher for Facebook, and Tal Hassner, research scientist, published research detailing an unsupervised AI model called TextStyleBrush that can view a single typed or handwritten word via a smartphone camera, emulate its typeface, and then virtually replace the original text with another word in the camera view.Facebook”It works similar to the way style brush tools work in word processors, but for text aesthetics in images. It surpasses…more