VR
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Hidden forces and sliding screens trick the senses to make VR feel more real
The next big thing in VR might not be higher resolution or more immersive sound, but an experience augmented by physical sensations or moving parts that fool your senses into mistaking virtual for reality. Researchers at SIGGRAPH, from Meta to international student groups, flaunted their latest attempts to make VR and AR more convincing. The…
Meta had one of its best quarters since before it changed its name from Facebook. The company reported 11% year-over-year revenue growth, which is a sigh of relief for investors,…
Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on China cast shadow over Meta’s VR quest
As Meta sets its sight on introducing its virtual reality headsets to the Chinese market, Mark Zuckerberg’s contentious remarks about Beijing in the past may pose a major obstacle to…
Brilliant Labs puts AI in front of your eye with its tiny open source AR lens
Brilliant Labs’ augmented reality wearable stands in stark contrast to Apple’s pricey, bulky, stealthy Vision Pro. The startup’s inaugural product, Monocle, is an open source, pocket-sized AR lens that can…
Apple’s Vision Pro SDK is now available, in-person developer labs launch next month
Time to get a jump on all of that spatial computing. Apple today announced that its visionOS software development kit is now available, allowing 3D parties to begin building content…
Meta says it’s totally fine for 10-year-olds to wear its VR headset, probably
Meta will soon officially permit users as young as 10 to use its Meta Quest 2 and 3 VR headsets — if their parents say it’s okay, anyway. In a…
After a reported seven years of development, Apple’s AR headset is finally here. It’s been a minute since we’ve had a “one more thing” moment. The wisdom, efficacy and ultimate…
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Apple WWDC 2023: Headset rumors, iOS 17 and everything else to expect
Look. We’re all interested in one. I know it, you know it, Apple certainly knows it. Much as AI was Google’s primary focus at I/O and … I don’t know — Windows 11, I guess — was Microsoft’s centerpiece at Build, we’re all going into and leaving WWDC 2023 with one thing in mind: XR.…
On Monday, Apple is more than likely going to reveal its long-awaited augmented or mixed reality Reality Pro headset during the keynote of its annual WWDC developer conference in California.…
Say hello to the second worst kept secret in VR. Meta today gave the world the first (official) glimpse of its latest headset, the Quest 3. The mixed reality hardware…
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A brief history of VR and AR
By the time Howard Rheingold’s “Virtual Reality” was published in 1991, the Sensorama was already a “slowly deteriorating” relic stashed away in a cabana next the pool at its inventor’s West Los Angeles home. Rheingold describes awe — even surprise — that the system was still operable almost 30 years after its introduction. “I was…
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I actually had fun at Fatboy Slim’s metaverse rave
I stood outside a 50s truck stop diner and gas station under a dark, dusky sky. A bright neon sign that said Norm’s Drive In illuminated the space. Behind a psychedelic school bus parked in the dirt lot, monstrous limbs with huge eyeballs, long lashes and smiley faces for irises extended upwards. Little aliens ran…
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A decade later, this VR treadmill is finally ready to ship
As free promotion for hardware startups go, one would be hard pressed to point to something better than a $175 million Spielberg film. “It was actually Warner Bros. that had reached out to us to get two Omnis for use in the movie,” Virtuix founder and CEO Jan Goetgeluk tells TechCrunch. “We shipped them two,…
Metaverse is just VR, admits Meta, as it lobbies against ‘arbitrary’ network fee
Meta, the self-styled “metaverse company” formerly known as Facebook, has taken on a novel role de-hyping the virtual world technology its founder bet the farm on just a few short…
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Apple’s AR/VR headset reportedly being pushed out due to ‘huge pressure to ship’
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Apple is building a mixed reality headset that’s set to ship this year. The company’s MR (AR+VR) hardware ranks among its longest-lasting rumor cycles. Some (Apple Watch) have borne fruit. Others (that pesky Apple TV set) not so much. The category doesn’t feel like a foregone conclusion…
Senators urge Zuckerberg to keep teens out of the metaverse
Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Ed Markey (D-MA) wrote a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging him to halt Meta’s plans to open Horizon Worlds to teens. Per a…
Hexa raises $20.5M to turn images into 3D objects for VR, AR and more
Hexa, a 3D asset visualization and management platform, today announced that it closed a $20.5 million Series A round from Point72 Ventures, Samurai Incubate, Sarona Partners and HTC. CEO and…
I’m not sure how high up size is on the VR scene’s current list of complaints. Truth is, there are still a lot of things standing between the technology and…
Gemba, a corporate VR training platform used by Coca-Cola and Pfizer, raises $18M
Gemba, an enterprise-focused virtual reality (VR) training startup used by some of the world’s biggest companies, has raised $18 million in a Series A round of funding. Gemba designs and…
Emperia is helping brands like Bloomingdales build shopping experiences in VR
Does the average person want to shop for apparel in virtual reality (VR)? Speaking for myself, it sounds rather cumbersome — having to plop on a headset to browse for,…
AltspaceVR has had a few close calls over the years, but the company that built virtual social spaces well before “metaverse” was a household word is shuttering for good this…
After struggling with consumers, Magic Leap hang its hopes on enterprise
Something wasn’t working. In late 2020, Magic Leap announced a major change spearheaded by incoming CEO, Peggy Johnson. “[W]hat I found was nothing was really broken,” she told the press…
VR comes of age, as Rendever, a mixed reality startup focused on the elderly, acquires Alcove from AARP
Elderly people are not typically thought of as early adopters of cutting-edge technology, but there are startups looking to buck that trend, banking on an opportunity to provide them with…
Lablaco seeks to help usher in the new era of web3 digitized retail
SPIN focuses on luxury consumers, though it’s not hard to ponder what an app such as this could do for a market in desperate need of a transfix, such as…
Meta’s Connect conference held earlier this week had announcements ranging from the new $1,500 Quest Pro headset to the company’s partnership with Microsoft to bring productivity tools to VR. However,…
Earlier this year, when we covered the news that Meta had signed on with fast food giant McDonald’s as a customer for Workplace, the B2B service that was originally conceived…
Daily Crunch: Meta’s upcoming VR headset will track eye movements and capture facial expressions
Hello, friends, and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.
Mark Zuckerberg says the metaverse won’t be as cringey as his cursed selfie
To mark the expansion of Meta’s bland virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, into France and Spain, Mark Zuckerberg recently shared a selfie. The graphic, featuring the boyish CEO in front…
If you’ve ever searched on YouTube for a review of the latest iPhone or electric car, then you’ve probably encountered Marques Brownlee. Since he started his channel MKBHD as a…
LG officially pulled the plug on its smartphone division in April of last year. It was another signpost in a dramatically changing mobile market that had left the electronics giant…
