AR Insider

MARCH 30, 2021

This traces back to Facebook’s Oculus acquisition in early 2014 that kicked off the current wave of excitement….including That excitement culminated in 2016 after the Oculus acquisition had time to set off a chain reaction of startup activity, tech-giant investment, and VC inflows for the “next computing platform.” Part V: Apple.

Wearables 363

Wearables AR Strategy Apple 363

VRScout

NOVEMBER 21, 2017

Microsoft ‘Mixed Reality’ Headset Discounts. Microsoft’s Windows “Mixed Reality” headsets are now on sale for up to $100, bringing the cheapest among them to just $300. Only available in Microsoft retail and online stores in the US and Canada, the sale goes on until 11:59 PM PST on November 27, 2017. Shop on Amazon.

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North America Retail Samsung Amazon 236

The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2020

Oculus devices will require a Facebook login. The enormous piece of news of the week is tha t Facebook has communicated that from October, 20th, all people that want to use an Oculus device for personal use will have to use their personal Facebook account to log in. Top news of the week. Image by Tweakanalogy). The same on Twitter.

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Unreal Apple Government Oculus 504

Road to VR

MARCH 10, 2020

So here’s the complete list of VR headsets compatible with the game, and we’ll also explain what you need to play Half-Life: Alyx on Oculus Quest, minimum PC specifications for the game, and more. Image courtesy Microsoft. Oculus Rift (original AKA CV1). Oculus Rift S. Google / Daydream. Vive Pro Eye.

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Oculus Controllers Samsung HTC 317

The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 27, 2021

Oculus Quest 2 had a great Christmas. The sales of Oculus Quest 2 have been great during the holidays , and the Quest has been a Christmas gift very much appreciated by kids (but wasn’t there an age limit?). Many Rift users reported problems in using the Oculus Store on PC this week , in particular in downloading games.

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Unity Oculus Virtual Reality Gaming 516

AR Insider

MARCH 16, 2021

This traces back to Facebook’s Oculus acquisition in early 2014 that kicked off the current wave of excitement….including That excitement culminated in 2016 after the Oculus acquisition had time to set off a chain reaction of startup activity, tech-giant investment, and VC inflows for the “next computing platform.” The Plurality.

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AR Google Data Examples 339

The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 7, 2024

Or maybe “relaxed” is not the right word to use, considering the little drama on Microsoft’s headsets. Top news of the week (Image by HP) Microsoft officially drops support for its Mixed Reality headsets Microsoft has just released the infamous Windows 11, version 24H2 update. I think this speaks a lot.

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Microsoft Samsung Apple Unity 411

ARPost

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

billion in 2019, with many billions more being invested in R&D by the likes of Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and many more. Their Oculus app allows real-time collaboration without ever leaving your home. Venture capital investment in augmented reality and virtual reality hit $4.1

Augmented Reality 368

Augmented Reality Machine Learning New York Los Angeles 368

The Ghost Howls

JULY 9, 2022

The Digital Markets Act is a law that the European Parliament and Commission are discussing since 2020 and has the purpose of limiting the excessive power of the major tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta. And the same holds for Google, which is applying similar restrictions.

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Apple Europe Data Amazon 515

VRScout

NOVEMBER 24, 2016

Can you believe its only been a year since the only VR headsets you could buy for the holidays was a Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard, or a Mattel View-Master. 100 Gift Code With Oculus Rift. Black Friday may be a great time to pick up an Oculus Rift. The Oculus Store Wallet code will be emailed within 10 days of purchase.

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HTC Oculus Samsung Microsoft 150

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 1, 2021

Oculus has also partnered with Virtuclear to offer prescription lenses for the Quest 2 for $80. All the 3 major VR runtimes (Oculus, SteamVR, Microsoft) are now compatible with OpenXR , and this means that on the runtime layer on PC, now OpenXR has been fully integrated.

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Sony Oculus Unity AR 412

AR Insider

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

” For Google, investments in AR are to drive search (visual search, mapping). Amazon wants AR for product visualization, pursuant to boosting e-commerce sales and reducing returns. Google will be the knowledge layer , just like its web index serves that purpose on the 2D web. to Oculus headsets.

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Exercises Magic Leap AR Data 266

AR Insider

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

All the big tech players — Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon — are in the game as well. Companies like Ikea, Target, and Amazon have already used ARKit, mostly for placing virtual furniture in a room to see if it fits. Google’s approach was significantly lighter and simpler than what’s come since.

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Augmented Reality Amazon Apple Virtual Reality 198

The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

These are huge numbers for VR: if you look at the most recent SteamVR survey, you get that Oculus headsets are now at 67% of the whole PCVR market. A report from Insider states that Microsoft may have canceled its plans for HoloLens 3. It’s basically a monopoly. But there is also bad news to talk about. Some updates on Meta products.

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Virtual Reality Microsoft Data Machine Learning 403

The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

An Amazon ad appearing on the streaming platform Peacock shows the Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S and the caption: “Meta Quest, starting at $299.99”. Regarding the actual release date, we have also a rumor: someone spotted on the Australian Amazon page an entry about the Quest 3S and the availability date being October, 16.

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Unity Kenya Samsung AR 360

AR Insider

OCTOBER 1, 2019

Why Facebook and Amazon have joined the race to bring computing to your face. — Facebook and Amazon each discussed computer glasses at launch events this week. — Amazon’s approach is to get a lightweight product out now, while Facebook is promising advanced technology in a few years. by Kif Leswing, CNBC, 9/29/19.

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Amazon San Jose Google Microsoft 159

AR Insider

JANUARY 21, 2020

We’ve generally stated “tens of billions” for the collective investment scale of the big five — Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. More importantly, this aligns with the timeframe that followed its 2014 Oculus acquisition. billion for a representative baseline of pre-Oculus spending.

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Head Mounted Display Exercises AR Trends 254

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 20, 2021

The Oculus Quest 2 is selling incredibly well because it offers the right combination of affordable price, good hardware, and a good software ecosystem. Not to mention the millions spent on marketing , especially in the US (Oculus was one of the sponsors of NBA, for instance). The Quest will still be the king.

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Virtual Reality Trends China HTC 545

ARPost

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

According to CBINSIGHTS , tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple (FAMGA) have all been acquiring AI startups aggressively in the last decade. Facebook invested heavily in Oculus Rift to bring in believable character avatars using generative models through deep learning. Source: CBINSIGHTS.

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AR Augmented Reality Machine Learning Google 217

AR Insider

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Earlier in this series, we examined Google’s ambitions to create more direct user touchpoints (literally) that drive revenue-generating search by voice, visual and text. The story is similar for Amazon , Microsoft and Bose (kind of), and the 800-pound gorilla in wearables, Apple. Orbiting Initiatives. Social Experiment.

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Wearables Machine Learning AR Apple 261

The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 4, 2021

I have to say that this “leak” comes in a very timely fashion , by chance exactly at the moment when Facebook was building the hype for Oculus Quest 2 Pro , convincing so some people to wait for Valve’s moves before buying the new Oculus headset. Microsoft is going to release a database of synthetic faces.

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HTC Oculus AR Gaming 378

The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 4, 2019

I think that Gartner was not referring to the consumer market, where VR is still unripe (even if devices like the Oculus Quest and the Vive Focus Plus are helping it in becoming more widespread), but at the B2B one, where VR is already helping companies to spare money (e.g. thanks to a better training).

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Augmented Reality AR Technology Latency 417

The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

This has been the week of the OC6, but, believe it or not, I have been able to find some other interesting news that don’t regard Oculus. Image by Oculus). Oculus bets on Oculus Quest at OC6. Well, the top news of the week is, of course, the Oculus Connect 6. Do you want to read them? Top news of the week.

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Oculus Augmented Reality AR Amazon 188

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 30, 2020

The same day of the launch of Half-Life: Alyx, Hewlett-Packard has announced its new virtual reality headset, the Reverb G2 , made in collaboration with Microsoft and Valve. Valve could provide some audio-visual improvements, while Microsoft its WMR platform, with inside-out tracking of controllers. HP announces the Reverb G2.

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Apple AR Eye Tracking Virtual Reality 294

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 2, 2020

To make you understand how these features are incredible, Qualcomm has stated that “the [XR2] reference design has 2x the CPU and GPU performance, 4x more video bandwidth, 6x higher resolution and 11x AI improvement compared to our current widely adopted XR platform [the Oculus Quest ]”. Image by Microsoft). News worth a mention.

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Hand tracking AR Oculus HTC 294

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 17, 2022

The news of the week is that Meta is poaching talents from all the other companies : in particular, it has been able to “steal” 100 employees from the HoloLens team in Microsoft. It is just a bit more expensive than the $300 needed to buy an Oculus Quest 2. Wendy’s is not afraid of roasting Oculus Funny link. Some XR fun.

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Survey Apple Sony AR 539

The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 1, 2024

More info (Logitech MX Ink now available) More info (My hands-on with the device) The end of HoloLens 2 Microsoft has officially announced the end-of-life of the Microsoft HoloLens 2: the company is now selling the last stock and will slowly discontinue the headset. Big kudos to the team and good luck for the future!

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Apple Unity Ukraine AR 379

The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 9, 2019

Oculus products have gone pretty well during the Black Weekend. Past weekend has been the weekend of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday and the company that has dominated the sales of VR hardware has been of course Oculu s, thanks to the discounts on Rift S and Go and the great reputation of the Oculus Quest. Well, here you are!

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Magic Leap AR Virtual Reality Augmented Reality 242

XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

AUGUST 30, 2022

Tender Claws and Google ARCore. As extended reality gaming experiences continue to take the world by storm, leading cloud and technology vendors like Google are offering game creators and developers an easy avenue into the ecosystem. RoboRaid and Microsoft HoloLens. Alta VR, AWS, and Oculus.

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Case Study Study Gaming Unity 128

The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

Image by Google). Google completely opensources Cardboard. With a surprise move, Google has announced with a blog post that it ha opensourced completely Cardboard. Google affirms that Cardboard has been a huge success to introduce people into VR, and more than 15 million headsets have been distributed. Image from Amazon).

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Augmented Reality Google Machine Learning AR 183

AR Insider

OCTOBER 31, 2019

The World Map in this world therefore isn’t a 2D street map like we have with Google Maps or Open Street Map, nor is it a 3D map with terrain and building volumes. Both Azure Spatial Anchors and Google Cloud Anchors are leveraging existing strengths in mapping towards the AR Cloud. Insane, yet companies are mapping it already.

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Magic Leap AR Microsoft Apple 157

ARVR

JANUARY 6, 2023

Users can use HMD devices such as Google Cardboard, Oculus Quest, Rift or HTC Vive to experience an imaginary environment. Microsoft Hololens is a key player in the MR market. ARCore   — ARCore is an AR SDK released by Google in 2018 for building augmented reality experiences.

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Augmented Reality AR Machine Learning Data 246

The Ghost Howls

JULY 24, 2023

Luckily there is AR that is still strong, and we can hope to wear Google AR glasses soon… ah no, they are dead too. For me this is not a fortunate sentence: this is what Alex Kipman said about the HoloLens, a few weeks before the whole Microsoft Mixed Reality division was disbanded and he was fired from the company.

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Apple Survey Machine Learning AR 362

UploadVR Between Realities podcast

NOVEMBER 4, 2016

billion from companies listed below like Google and Qualcomm. Facebook – NASDAQ: FB – Oculus VR, VR headset, VR Camera, VR content, VR platform. Google – NASDAQ: GOOG – Cardboard, Google VR, Daydream & Tango, VR cameras, Tilt Brush. Amazon – NASDAQ: AMZN – VR Content & Game Engine. Unconfirmed.

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Industry Magic Leap Samsung Amazon 100

TechCrunch VR

JANUARY 30, 2020

” He also pointed out the development over at Amazon, where last month the company announced AWS Wavelength for ultra-low latency 5G computing at the edge, something that will have a direct impact on using and building the next generation of AR and VR headgear.

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Magic Leap AR Amazon Augmented Reality 123

AR Insider

MAY 6, 2020

8th Wall recently partnered with Amazon Sumerian on a WebAR ad experience where, with just a click of a banner ad, an AR experience placed a 3D Spiderman into your space for you to interact with directly in your mobile browser. Just imagine a world where Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant have bodies.

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AR Examples Data Head Mounted Display 402

ARVR

APRIL 5, 2021

This traces back to Facebook’s Oculus acquisition in early 2014 that kicked off the current wave of excitement….including That excitement culminated in 2016 after the Oculus acquisition had time to set off a chain reaction of startup activity, tech-giant investment, and VC inflows for the “next computing platform.”

Wearables 130

Wearables AR Strategy Apple 130