Mixed Reality News Features
News: Renault Trucks Tests HoloLens to Visualize Quality Control in Engine Assembly Operations
French manufacturer Renault Trucks is looking to the HoloLens to improve quality control processes with its engine assembly operations.
News: The Enterprise Leap — Robots, Gremlins, & Games Won't Save Magic Leap, but Tapping the Inner Child of CEOs Just Might
Mystery is a tricky thing. Used correctly, it can give onlookers the impression that wondrous and perhaps valuable things are afoot. However, once the veil of suspension of disbelief is removed in any significant way, that same mystery can quickly turn into not just skepticism, but outright anger at what may have seemed like an attempt to dupe trusting onlookers.
News: Magic Leap Unveils First Look at Magicverse AR Cloud & New Meetings Capabilities in Lumin OS Update
With many office workers in the US being asked to work from home if their job allows, Magic Leap's customary updates for the Lumin OS and Lumin SDK brings some help to keep distributed workforces connected.
News: Zappar Goes from $84,000 Kickstarter to $3.75 Million Series A Funding for Mobile AR
In December of last year, UK-based Zappar successfully raise $84,356 for their ZapBox mixed reality headset—over $50,000 more than their goal. Well, they just blew that sum out of the water when they announced this morning that they've closed a Series A round of funding with $3.75 million.
News: Meta Reaches Settlement as Patent Infringement Claims Emerge
While Meta Company has agreed to a settlement in its lawsuit against a former employee and his company, they find the tables have now turned on them in the form of patent infringement allegations from another entity.
News: Microsoft Uses HoloLens 2 to Demo Multi-Language Speaking Avatar That Looks Just Like You
It's always great to see a company pull off a bit of augmented reality magic, but what we see is not always what it's cracked up to be.
News: How Skype Video Chatting Works on the HoloLens
When you wear a holographic computer on your face, you gain some things and lose others. That's certainly the case when using Skype in Microsoft's HoloLens. Some video chats will work better because your caller can see what you see, rather than your face—but others just feel weird.
Video: Haptics Make Holograms Touchable on the HoloLens
Imagine wearing your HoloLens, then reaching out to touch a hologram and actually feeling it. Mind blown, right?! Now imagine that same hologram responding to your touch. I don't mean in the way holograms currently respond to an air tap, but a much more refined and precise touch. Maybe you touch a character on the shoulder and it turns around to see you, or maybe you hit a button in the air and it reacts accordingly.
News: Mimesys Brings Its Version of Augmented Reality Video Calling to Magic Leap via Intel RealSense
The release of Avatar Chat for Magic Leap One and Spatial for HoloLens during the fourth quarter of 2018 appeared to revolutionize video calling via augmented reality.
News: Stimulant's HoloLens App Helps Navigate Inside Buildings
We've got Google Maps to help us out when we need to navigate outdoors, but Google can only map out so many indoor locations without getting creepy. And that's where Stimulant comes in. This "innovation studio" built a HoloLens app that lets you map out an area, define locations, and use the headset to get instant directions to any defined location.
News: HoloLens Update Brings Display Mirroring & Quick Actions Menu for Routine Tasks
Microsoft has informed HoloLens users that the company will begin rolling out a mandatory update for HoloLens as part of its Windows 10 October 2018 release that brings a number of new features and quality-of-life improvements to the headset.
News: Magic Leap's 'Blink' Demo Shows How Eye Tracking & Spatial Audio Make Virtual Content Come Alive
Over the past few weeks, a trio of developer lessons (one of which was revealed in Magic Leap's most recent Twitch livestream) have revealed samples of experiences that are possible while using the Magic Leap One.
News: UC Berkeley Team Commands Drone Fleet with HoloLens
User interfaces for computers have evolved over the years, from the introduction of the keyboard and mouse on the personal computer, to touchscreens on mobile devices, to natural voice recognition. However, the same cannot be said for robots or drones—until now.
News: Magic Leap Claims He Stole Augmented Reality Ideas as an Employee, but Who Is Chi Xu, the Founder of Nreal?
When I first found out about Nreal, back in the spring of 2018, the most interesting thing about the company's story was the founder's background. Chi Xu, the CEO and founder of Nreal, previously worked at Magic Leap as a software engineer.
News: First Footage of Magic Leap's Music App with Sigur Rós Revealed
On Monday morning, secretive augmented reality startup Magic Leap revealed a collaboration with Icelandic music group Sigur Rós. But the story detailing the app didn't reveal anything more than a still image of the interactive Tónandi app, leaving most of us to use to our imaginations in terms of visualizing how it worked.
News: Magic Leap Highlights Award-Winning Augmented Reality Apps Revealed at Reality Virtually Hackathon
With Magic Leap One approaching six months since launch, Magic Leap is fully focused on building a content ecosystem and developer community.
News: HoloTube Brings YouTube to the HoloLens, but It Needs to Be Way Better
HoloTube, a new unofficial YouTube app for the Microsoft HoloLens, brings a whole bunch of new content to the mixed reality headset. While it's nice to have, the experience feels focused on quantity, not quality. HoloTube has a simple interface most people will recognize. You get a page of video categories, and as you drill down through each option you're presented with videos to watch. You can view regular, flat videos on the wall (or wherever you like)—which has its merits.
News: Microsoft Invites Rest of Europe to HoloLens Party with Expanded Availability in 29 Markets
Just days after announcing the launch of two new mixed reality studio facilities, Microsoft is extending its mixed reality reach even further with the announcement that the HoloLens will now be offered in 29 new markets.
News: Magic Leap One Teardown Reveals Sophisticated Hardware with Shortish Shelf Life & Low Repairability
One of the primary marketing tactics used by Magic Leap in promoting the Magic Leap One was selling early adopters on the "magic" contained within the device. On Thursday, some of that magic was uncovered as the Magic Leap One was completely disassembled by repair engineers, revealing the delicate innards of the device and detailing how it delivers its augmented reality experiences.
News: Windows 10 Will Be a Free Upgrade with "Windows Holographic" on the Horizon
Microsoft dropped a couple of huge bombs at their Windows 10 event Wednesday afternoon. Free operating systems and holographic glasses? This must be a Sci-Fi novel or a Hollywood blockbuster, because it reeks of fiction.
News: Microsoft HoloLens Art Project Turns New York into an Undersea Dystopia
The HoloLens team is finally beginning to realize that to truly engage the mainstream, augmented reality needs to make its way out of the lab or factory floor and onto the streets.
News: Microsoft Discontinuing Major OS Updates for HoloLens 1
With HoloLens 2 (hopefully) just around the corner, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be providing any major operating system updates to the original HoloLens.
News: Better Spatial Maps Will Make Mixed Reality Great
A group of researchers from Stanford University and Princeton University has put together the largest RGB-D video dataset to date with over 1,500 scans of over 700 different locations across the world, for a total of 2.5 million views.
News: Trimble & Umbra Partner to Bring Complex Imagery on the HoloLens
When developing for the HoloLens, keeping a constant 60 fps (frames per second) while making things look beautiful is a challenge. Balancing the processing power to display complex models and keeping the frame rate where it needs is just a straight up painful process, but a solution seems to be on the horizon.
News: HoloLens Continues to Make the World Your Canvas with Inclusion of SketchAR
The app SketchAR is an easy, innovative way to trace what you want to draw onto the canvas of your choice. It was first released on iOS and Android Tango phones, but now, finally, it has been released on Microsoft's HoloLens.
News: Brian Eno Brings Interactive Music Composition to Augmented Reality in 'Bloom: Open Space' Event
Famed musician and composer Brian Eno is giving the air guitar and drumming crowd the means to make music from their gesturing through the Microsoft HoloLens.
News: Resolution Games Follows 'Angry Birds FPS' with 'Glimt' Mystery Game for Magic Leap One
After leveraging the well-known intellectual property of Rovio's Angry Birds for its first game for the Magic Leap One, Resolution Games is singing a new song with a familiar refrain for its next game for the augmented reality headset.
News: Microsoft HoloLens 2 & Unity Used to Highlight the Threat to Endangered Whales at the Smithsonian
Although the enterprise use cases for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 continue to impress, the arts community just can't stay away from the best augmented reality headset on the market.
HoloToolkit: How to Add Voice Commands to Your HoloLens App
The HoloToolkit offers a great many, simple ways to add what seems like extremely complex features of the HoloLens, but it can be a bit tricky if you're new to Windows Holographic. So this will be the first in an ongoing series designed to help new developers understand what exactly we can do with the HoloLens, and we'll start with voice commands.
News: NBA Update Delivers Live Games & Player Comparison Stats in Magic Leap App
It's a magical time of year for basketball fans, with the NCAA Tournament in full swing and NBA frontrunners in the midst of their push to clinch spots in the playoffs.
HoloLens Dev 101: How to Get Started with Unity's New Video Player
The release of Unity 5.6 brought with it several great enhancements. One of those enhancements is the new Video Player component. This addition allows for adding videos to your scenes quickly and with plenty of flexibility. Whether you are looking to simply add a video to a plane, or get creative and build a world layered with videos on 3D objects, Unity 5.6 has your back.
News: Experiments in Stock Market 3D Data Visualization on the HoloLens
HoloLens developer Michael Peters of In-Vizible has released quite a few videos since receiving his HoloLens last year. Many of his experiments are odd and funny, but some include serious potential approaches to data visualization. In the videos embedded below, you'll specifically see stock market information beautifully rendered in different ways to help understand the data.
News: Medical Software Maker Medivis Closes $2.3 Million in Funding to Bring HoloLens to Surgical Platform
The HoloLens has made enough of an impact on the healthcare industry for Microsoft technology partner Medivis to convince investors to pledge $2.3 million in funding for its surgical platform.
Proof of Concept: Music Everywhere Uses HoloLens to Help Piano Students Learn Improvisation
Students from Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center have been working on an augmented reality system to help teach music in a project called Music Everywhere.
News: US Army Declares Microsoft the Winner in Battle for $480M AR Headset Contract
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.
News: Magic Leap & Weta Workshop Preview Multiplayer Mode for Dr. Grordbort's Invaders at GDC
Visitors to the Unity booth at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco will get a special augmented reality treat courtesy of Magic Leap and Weta Workshop.
How To: Add Full Body Motion Tracking to the HoloLens with a Kinect
Thanks to Project-Infrared, there's now a pretty straightforward way to add motion tracking to the HoloLens: Connect it to a Kinect.
News: Microsoft Is About to Revolutionize How We Watch Sports at Home
Obviously this is just a teaser, and who knows how soon we'll see something like this in real life, but just go ahead and watch the video first before you continue reading.
News: HoloLens Assists in Live Surgery
Numerous examples exist of doctors and surgeons using HoloLens to plan surgeries. The device has even been used to view reference images during a procedure and stream it to a remote audience. Until recently, it has not been used to augment the surgeon's view of the patient during a live surgery.
News: The HoloLens Can Now Wirelessly Use a PC's CPU & GPU for Faster Development Cycles
Virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive tether to desktop computers with robust GPUs in order to harness their power. The free-roaming, cordless Microsoft HoloLens forgoes those chains but loses a bit of graphical processing power in the mix. However, a recent report suggests we may get the best of both worlds.