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Category: augmented reality

Virginia Tech’s Professor Doug Bowman comes to Apple to make VR. This should be very interesting since he won the research grant to work on the “Hololens” — could be interesting.

According to a report in the Financial Times, Apple has hired one of the leading experts on virtual and augmented reality — Virginia Tech computer science professor Doug Bowman. He was recently listed among grant winners for HoloLens research projects and is skilled in creating 3D user interfaces, reports Endgadget. He has also co-authored a book called 3D User Interfaces Theory and Practice.

He’s been working on technologies such as wearable displays and full surround display prototypes at Virginia Tech.

Apple has been building up on its VR arsenal in the recent past with a string of acquisitions in the domain, along with reports of patents and other significant hires. While much has been happening behind closed doors, analysts predict that in 2016, that is going to change. Apple will become “very aggressive on the virtual/augmented reality front through organic as well as acquisitive means in 2016 as this represents a natural next generation consumer technology that plays well into its unrivaled iPhone ecosystem,” FBR & Co analyst Daniel Ives said in an earlier report.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=vXu5toPPqVE

Microsoft technical evangelist Bruce Harris has unveiled new details for Microsoft’s augmented reality headset, HoloLens. At an event in Tel Aviv, Harris was recorded (via Petri) saying that that any universal Windows 10 app will run natively on the device, as we’ve already heard, and that developers will naturally need to create 3D apps to realize the HoloLens’ full potential.

But Harris also talked about how the device features Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, describing it as “totally wireless.” In fact, he said a wired version of the HoloLens would not be available.

This brings up the question of battery life. Apparently in this department, the HoloLens will be “very much like a laptop.” That means up to 5.5 hours of basic use, and 2.5 hours of high-intensity use.

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The Osterhout Design Group, which has been making high-end night-vision goggles for years, has begun shipping its R-7 augmented reality glasses for enterprise applications. The $2,750 smartglasses are a sign of things to come, as the company eventually hopes to bring the technology to the masses at consumer prices.

Augmented reality is expected to become a $150 billion market by 2020, according to tech advisor Digi-Capital. But first, it has to become cheaper, lighter, and otherwise more practical. The R-7 represents ODG’s best trade-off between capability and cost. The company is showing the R-7 at the 2016 International CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week.

The ODG R-7 shows heads-up display images on the inside of the lenses, so you can see stereoscopic 3D or other animated imagery on top of objects in the real world. The company is targeting applications in health care, energy, transportation, warehouse, logistics, and government.

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Of all the recent advances in computing and consumer technology, This is BY FAR the one I’m most fascinated! Amazing tech.

The HoloLens headset from Microsoft is the world’s first untethered wearable that generates holograms before your eyes. It’s been nearly a year since we first strapped on a prototype, and as the tech goliath prepares to unleash a first batch of units to developers in the coming months, I was invited to check out just how far the technology has come.

Starting today, Microsoft’s letting developers flock to their flagship store in New York City to try out the same demos I did a few days ago. I should be clear: I tried a version of the headset that’s very similar to what will ultimately ship—for $3000!—but as always, no gadget is final until you’re pulling it out of the box.

First, a little bit about how it works. With the HoloLens, the “cursor” is your eyes. You look around a real room you’re in and select holographic images that appear in your goggles by hovering the cursor in the middle of your field of vision over the object. To interact with the object, you “air tap.” In front of the goggles by pointing your index finger in the air and making a fast swipe down motion. Voice commands are also at your disposal.

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I’ve been increasingly interested in translated science fiction novels, and one of the best ones that I picked up this year was Taiyo Fujii’s debut Gene Mapper.

Gene Mapper takes place in a future where augmented reality and genetic engineering is commonplace. When a freelance gene mapper named Hayashida finds that a project that he had worked on is collapsing, he believes that it’s being sabotaged. Determined to fix it, he travels to Vietnam where he finds that there’s more behind the problem than he initially thought.

You can read a tie-in story over on Lightspeed Magazine, ‘Violation of the TrueNet Security Act’.

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Autodesk and Microsoft have teamed up to bring virtual product designs into the real world using augmented reality. The two companies announced on Monday that Autodesk Fusion 360 — software that lets users design, test, and ultimately manufacture physical objects — will connect with Microsoft’s HoloLens headset.

Right now, details about the final product are scarce, but the two companies have spent time working together over the past year on bringing 3D models from a screen to the real world by displaying them to users wearing the HoloLens. The collaboration could make it possible for designers working in Fusion to work together on digital models in the physical world, if everyone involved is wearing one of Microsoft’s augmented reality headsets.

Doing that has the potential to be a boon for product designers, since they wouldn’t have to spend as much time manufacturing physical prototypes to be able to see how a product could look in real life. The HoloLens likely won’t replace physical prototyping entirely, though: the device’s field of view is fairly limited at this point, which means that it could be hard for designers to get a full feeling of what an some objects would look like, especially if they’re particularly large.

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Augmented reality (AR) isn’t all headsets and funny glasses. Amazon wants to turn it into something that you can interact with in your living room, judging by a couple of the company’s recently approved patents. The “object tracking” patent shows how a system of projectors and cameras could beam virtual images onto real objects, and track your hand while you interact with them. The other, called “reflector-based depth mapping,” would use a projector to transform your room into a kind of holodeck, mapping the depth of objects and bodies in a room.

If all of this sounds familiar, it certainly is — Microsoft has a very similar concept called “RoomAlive” (originally “IllumiRoom”) that used a combination of projectors and Kinect depth sensors to turn your room into a virtual environment (below). In demos, Microsoft showed how the system could generate a virtual room that would enhance videos and even let you interact with /shoot at game objects projected on your walls. Microsoft appears to have put the RoomAlive concept on the backburner for now (though you can try to hack one together yourself) while it focuses on its Hololens headset-based AR concept.

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