Tag: mixed-reality

  • Apple Vision Pro is exactly what I hoped for

    I am very happy. For many years I’ve wanted a computing experience that resembles precisely what Apple announced at WWDC just a few short weeks ago. In 2019 I wrote “I want any size screen, any time, any where.” As poorly written as that sentence may be, I think Apple is attempting to deliver just…

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  • Will Apple’s headset enhance productivity?

    I’ve written several times about mixed reality experiences over the last 6 or 7 years here on my blog. I recently went back and looked at some of those posts and so I thought I’d sum up my thinking as it stands today, as well as detail what I hope to see from Apple’s headset.…

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  • Humane Leap of faith

    John Gruber on Humane’s recent demo at TED: “So far, it feels like Humane’s entire premise is founded on that same mistake: building a new device intended to replace our phones, without that new device being able to do any of the dozens of things we love to do on our phones that require a…

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  • Magic Leap of faith

    I’ve covered some news regarding Magic Leap a few times here on the blog. You can skim the posts here. I’ll pull a quote from something I wrote in the summer of 2018: But I do think Magic Leap is playing a dangerous game with the hype machine. They should try to lower expectations before…

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  • VR-OS

    VR-OS: A new operating system beyond the limits of your monitor Impressive concept. But far from being a reality. I would like something like this but in AR, so I can still see the world around me. I’d rather the “windows” of the OS to be able to be anywhere “in the room” such as…

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  • I want any size screen, any time, any where

    Andy Baio in an interview on Uses This: I’ve worn glasses for my entire life, so my personal dream setup would be replacing my laptop, monitor, and phone all at once by replacing my prescription lenses with augmented-reality glasses that annotate the world around me without blocking it out entirely. I do not wear glasses…

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  • Palmer Lucky on Magic Leap

    Palmer Lucky, co-founder of Oculus (no longer with the company): The product they put out is reasonably solid, but is nowhere close to what they had hyped up, and has several flaws that prevent it from becoming a broadly useful tool for development of AR applications. That is not good for the XR industry. It…

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  • Magic Leap One Creator Edition

    Adi Robertson for The Verge: But the Magic Leap One’s 50-degree diagonal field of view, while larger than the competing Microsoft HoloLens, is still extremely limited. And the image quality feels roughly on par with the two-year-old HoloLens. It’s generally good, but with some tracking and transparency issues. Given how much effort Magic Leap has…

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  • Magic Leap hype

    First line in this Wired piece about the Magic Leap One: In retrospect, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz realizes that all the hype was a big mistake. “I think we were arrogant,” he says. Umm, yeah. /via Daring Fireball.

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  • Observations on Oculus Go

    At work we picked up an Oculus Go for research and development purposes. But of course I commandeered the device first to put it through its paces and I think I have a good enough feel for it to write up a few observations. These are, as always, in no particular order. Many of my…

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  • Retail AR

    Dent Reality, a company looking to create practical applications for augmented reality, has released a video preview of their first offering Retail AR: Retail AR can improve the customer experience and boost sales, by surfacing product details, displaying spatial information and navigating customers to relevant areas. Be sure to watch the video. You’ll see its…

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  • Firefox Reality

    Mozilla: Mozilla has always been on the frontlines of virtual and augmented reality (see our work with WebVR, WebAR and A-Frame), and this is a mixed reality browser that is specifically built to tackle the new opportunities and challenges of browsing the immersive web. Me, in April 2017: The way information is displayed is going to dramatically change within…

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  • We’re in phase one of Augmented Reality

    Apple just published a page dedicated to Augmented Reality in the latest versions of iOS. It is a good page overviewing some of the use cases we’re already seeing with AR. This is just the beginning. I’ve written about AR many times, so I won’t reiterate everything today. But look at these use cases and…

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  • Richard MacManus’s tech predictions

    Richard MacManus attempts to predict some things for 2018: We’ll finally get a killer app for AR in 2018. Maybe hope springs eternal, but I’d love to see an AR app with real utility – not just a game like Pokemon Go. I suppose it matters how you define "killer app". For me a killer…

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  • A technology predication time capsule

    Readers of my blog will know that I occasionally attempt to predict when certain technologies that I write about will hit the mainstream. While I’m very passionate about a few technologies, I try to temper that excitement with the experiences I’ve had, the wisdom that comes with age, and other factors. Usually, things take a…

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  • Smartify

    Smartify: Smartify is a free app that allows you to scan and identify artworks, access rich interpretation and build a personal art collection in some of the world’s best museums and galleries. Gunseli Yalcinkaya, writing for Dezeen, calls it "a Shazam for the art world". This is cool. Can’t wait to try it out. /via…

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  • Oculus announcements galore

    Be sure to check out the Oculus blog as they’ve announced a slew of new things. I’m still going through them all and will be sifting through it over the coming days. But, at first glance, I’m really excited to see this category of product move forward. Here are the highlights for me (though there…

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  • Snap Art

    Josh Constine for TechCrunch: Snapchat plans to launch a new augmented reality art platform featuring pop artist Jeff Koons and others. It will allow art to be pinned to specific locations in augmented reality so users can see it when they hold up their phones in the right spot. Snapchat will solicit sign-ups from artists…

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  • Microsoft Windows Mixed Reality

    In this video Tom Warren of The Verge uses some mixed reality headsets for Windows. Watching them I’m reminded just how far this industry has to go. I’d call much of what I see in this video very much beta-level hardware and software. It has only been 5 months since I wrote the aforelinked piece…

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  • Tim Cook on ARKit

    Tim Cook, in a recent quarterly earnings call for Apple, on ARKit: One of the most exciting and most promising announcements from WWDC was ARKit, a new set of tools for developers to create augmented reality apps. It’s still early in the beta period, but it’s clear that ARKit has captured the imagination of our…

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  • Mirage

    Mirage: A world living on top of reality. I played around with the app this afternoon. It is very rough. Super frustrating to try and use. But I sincerely hope they continue to pull this thread. I hope to see a lot more of this type of thing over the next 36 months. /via Andy…

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  • Glass Enterprise

    Jay Kothari, Project Lead for Glass: Now the Glass product team is back at X, and we’ll be collaborating with the Google Cloud team and our partners to help customers across a variety of business sectors make the most of Glass. Together, we’re looking forward to seeing more businesses give their workers a way to…

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  • WWDC 2017 recap

    I wanted to take a few moments to jot down a comparison between my wish list for this year’s WWDC and what was announced. Also, towards the end, some quick thoughts on the surprises that were announced. Here are my wishes, in order from the previous post, and whether or not we got them. Shared…

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  • Is VR overrated?

    Kristopher B. Jones, an entrepreneur from near my neck of the woods, weighs in on VR in a recent Forbes piece debating the applicability of the technology: I’m a strong believer that virtual reality is overrated, as it has limited applications outside of very specific industries. Industries like gaming and medical training are likely to…

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  • Observations on the computer-mediated reality landscape

    The future won’t look this stupid. I promise. For the past several months I’ve been doing research on computer-mediated reality (CMR) – that is, when what’s real is somehow changed, interrupted, distorted, or otherwise effected by a wearable computer. This "ability" isn’t new and it is a nuanced superset of many different types including mixed reality…

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