Apple, Facebook and Snap are still driving the AR market with new investments and patents. The biggest impact – and it will stay like this for a while – has come from Apple’s ARKit. In the last five years I’ve never seen so many people creating AR examples as I am seeing now with the availability of Apples ARKit. The VC investments are also going in the same direction… more. This opens new doors and also new fields – whether it is about the convergence with AI or brain computer interfaces. Enjoy the latest update!
INVESTMENTS & TRENDS
VCs are investing heavily into AR and VR markets. The Top 10 of AR/VR investors have made more than 60 deals in the last 12 months. Read more on Pitchbook: http://ift.tt/2sLl9jN;
Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) are a topic that are gathering more attention. MIT has tested implants and Facebook’s Head of R&D devision „Building 8“ showed their activities in this field during the F8 conference. More info about BCIs in the article from Singularity Hub: http://ift.tt/2sLgfDq;
Snap is still active. They have done some great work with filters and now it is all about location-based functionalities. After releasing Snap Map there were reports about an image database for Snapchat that combined with the location of the user. The patent was filed in 2015 and it seems like it is linked with Snap’s IP acquisition from Drop in the same year. The Verge has more: http://ift.tt/2sLpAev;
Mobile AR could hit $60 billion by 2021 thanks to Apple and Facebook. In every talk and workshop we did in the last two years, we repeated the impact of Apple and Facebook for AR. Here we go! Venturebeat has more: http://ift.tt/2sLgdvi;
APPLE AR KIT SPECIAL
Talking about Apple and what it means to the further development of the AR business: since the release of ARKit there have been hundreds of little examples of how you can use the kit and AR. Every day we find more cool ideas. Our team was super interested when we did the first internal workshops with the ARKit. Here are just a few examples:
https://twitter.com/madewitharkit/status/880744158423658497
https://twitter.com/thevrara/status/880438844017057792
And my favorite https://twitter.com/madewithARKit/…
If you’re on Twitter you can follow „Made with ARKit“ to get the latest news: https://twitter.com/madewithARKit, on Facebook it is under: http://ift.tt/2tfRqD7.
You want more? Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, the founders of The Transformation Group, opened the Facebook page: http://ift.tt/2sLiiYl
NEW TECH…WHAT’S HOT!
Augmented World Expo Europe early-bird tickets are on sale. The European AWE will come to Munich on October 19/20. If you’re interested in presenting, having a booth or sponsorship opportunities, feel free to send me a message. Our RE’FLEKT team supports the AWE organizers and will host the Enterprise Panel. Get your discount for THE AR/VR event: http://www.aweeu.com/
Apple bought an eye-tracking company. Many other AR glasses manufacturers will use eye-tracking as it is one of the most natural gestures for us humans. Tom Emrich, Ori Inbar and Mark Billinghurst discussed what Apple can do with the eye-tracking and there are some surprises for me: http://ift.tt/2tfZDaw;
Google has revealed „Seurat“: a new ‘surface light-field’ rendering technology that should be able to reduce the file sizes of graphical assets for Mobile VR. It still seems to be in an early phase but very promising. RoadtoVR has more: http://ift.tt/2tfRrqF;
Contact lenses might be the future for AR. It looks like Google and Samsung are both working on it already – and according to the video, maybe even Sony as well. Since there is no official source proving it… could be a rumor or even fact – you decide. More in the video: http://ift.tt/2tfXQlM
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive more news around Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality.
The post Reality Report #6: Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality appeared first on WeAreAR - Augmented and Virtual Reality Blog.
via Mint VR