VR/AR/MR

Update: It's two days after the keynote. I was wrong. And so was Robert (Facebook link). I still have no doubt, that we'll get to that vision within the next year, but Apple is playing this the Apple way, e.g. slowly. Easing everyone into it in good time. One year ago, in October 2016, Robert Scoble posted this: "Just had a source that I trust tell me it is a clear piece of glass." As you can imagine, he was met with some disbelief and even ridicule. And while Robert tends to easily be excited, this time I believe he's mostly right. Now I know it's not smart of me to come out with bold statements just a few days before the actual reveal of a product, especially as I don't have any first-hand information. I might look like a fool on September 12. But it's all quite logical if you

This dramatically changes the ordering process (and puts new requirements on kitchens regarding exact reproduction of said food). And if you want to lose weight, just sit there and watch the images and have a virtual meal ;) https://youtu.be/kO-GodvY0OU

Of course, what Robert Scoble says isn't set in stone and sometimes it's helpful to have a grain (or a shovel) of salt at hand, especially when he gets really really excited about something. Like AR lately. I'm positive that something big is coming though, just how big and how fast it'll come is not clear. Then Robert posted this: https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/posts/10155529361249655   I was about to dive deeper, when I found this article that I believe sums it up nicely. The tl;dr? Scoble might really have something on his hands here. Apple is likely to make a huge dent in that market, possibly re-define it and lead the pack for years to come. ARKit is the foundation, but what we've seen so far is just the beginning. Here's his video, a bit long, but worth watc...

I‘ll just leave this here. Make sure to watch both videos. https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewProjDent/status/888380207962443777

https://youtu.be/72N3or0ZgMU If Pokemon Go was the last time you've looked at Augmented Reality, look again. With the iOS 11 announcement at this year's WWCD, Apple introduced ARKit, which is their take on Augmented Reality. Developers now have their hands on the tech and they're showing some really impressive demos. You can see a few in the video above. The tracking is one of the best I've seen so far. It's worth mentioning that they achieve that with the camera and the accelerometers only. I believe down to iPhone 6s. So as opposed to Google's Tango project, Apple's implementation requires no special 3D hardware. Once iOS 11 is out, this fact alone will open up their AR ecosystem to many millions of people at once. Apple seems to have several things solved in their implementation: ...

Well, stair must be one of the most boring things, but here's an interesting showcase for how to use AR in a construction context. Spacial awareness means our devices will be able to do so much more than they can do now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgtHnCJJUMU

Google's Project Tango was the first to market and others will follow in the consumer space very soon. 3D sensing is a critical component of the future of computing. It will not only allow facial recognition on a completely new level (e.g. you won't need finger print readers anymore), the spacial awareness of the devices will change pretty much anything. Think interaction. Think entertainment. Think mixed reality. Image recognition won't have to rely on a 2-dimensional photo, but can use actual depth, which will in turn make recognition reliability almost perfect. Gesture recognition is another piece of the puzzle. The moment your device can tell what your hands are doing, you'll have a new user interface. Touch that virtual computer screen that's hovering in front of your face ...

Update 2017-02-17: seems that Magic Leap isn't quite as far as they made seem. Some current perspective here. I'm still 100% in on AR/MR though. We ain't seen nothing yet... No, I'm not talking about the US elections, I'm talking about a profound change in technology that lies in our not too distant future. It will impact almost anything in our lives, the same way smartphones do. Just more profoundly. Since the iPhone was introduced in 2007, things haven't been the same. Now almost everybody carries one of those devices and they changed everything. Everybody now carries a camera all the time. Communications and social interactions have dramatically changed. Even seemingly disconnected things like film photography see their fair share of influence from smartphones. Physical rolodexes

(photo: htcvive.com) Now that more and more virtual reality (VR) products are coming on the market (Oculus Rift, HTC Vive for now) I've begun to look into VR a bit deeper. And it's really intriguing. Especially the HTC Vive looks great to me, with its rock-solid tracking un space of both the headset as well as the controllers. And there's some really exciting (and surprisingly simple) tech behind it. » this article explains how the HTC lighthouse technology works And here's a video where the architect of that technology explains it in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrsUMEbLtOs