augmented reality

The Intersections of Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality

AI, Artificial Intelligence, augmented reality, extended reality, featured, virtual reality / Ryan Harris / June 21, 2023

It seems like just yesterday it was the AR this, VR that, metaverse, metaverse, metaverse. Now all anyone can talk about is artificial intelligence. Is that a bad sign for XR? Some people seem to think so. However, people in the XR industry understand that it’s not a competition.

In fact, artificial intelligence has a huge role to play in building and experiencing XR content – and it’s been part of high-level metaverse discussions for a very long time. I’ve never claimed to be a metaverse expert and I’m not about to claim to be an AI expert, so I’ve been talking to the people building these technologies to learn more about how they help each other.

The Types of Artificial Intelligence in Extended Realities

For the sake of this article, there are three main different branches of artificial intelligence: computer vision, generative AI, and large language models. AI is more complicated than this, but this helps to get us started talking about how it relates to XR.

Computer Vision

In XR, computer vision helps apps recognize and understand elements in the environment. This places virtual elements in the environment and sometimes lets them react to that environment. Computer vision is also increasingly being used to streamline the creation of digital twins of physical items or locations.

Niantic is one of XR’s big world-builders using computer vision and scene understanding to realistically augment the world. 8th Wall, an acquisition that does its own projects but also serves as Niantic’s WebXR division, also uses some AI but is also compatible with other AI tools, as teams showcased in a recent Innovation Lab hackathon.

“During the sky effects challenge in March, we saw some really interesting integrations of sky effects with generative AI because that was the shiny object at the time,” Caitlin Lacey, Niantic’s Senior Director of Product Marketing told ARPost in a recent interview. “We saw project after project take that spin and we never really saw that coming.”

The winner used generative AI to create the environment that replaced the sky through a recent tool developed by 8th Wall. While some see artificial intelligence (that “shiny object”) as taking the wind out of immersive tech’s sails, Lacey sees this as an evolution rather than a distraction.

“I don’t think it’s one or the other. I think they complement each other,” said Lacey. “I like to call them the peanut butter and jelly of the internet.”

Generative AI

Generative AI takes a prompt and turns it into some form of media, whether an image, a short video, or even a 3D asset. Generative AI is often used in VR experiences to create “skyboxes” – the flat image over the virtual landscape where players have their actual interactions. However, as AI gets stronger, it is increasingly used to create virtual assets and environments themselves.

Artificial Intelligence and Professional Content Creation

Talespin makes immersive XR experiences for training soft skills in the workplace. The company has been using artificial intelligence internally for a while now and recently rolled out a whole AI-powered authoring tool for their clients and customers.

A release shared with ARPost calls the platform “an orchestrator of several AI technologies behind the scenes.” That includes developing generative AI tools for character and world building, but it also includes work with other kinds of artificial intelligence that we’ll explore further in the article, like LLMs.

“One of the problems we’ve all had in the XR community is that there’s a very small contingent of people who have the interest and the know-how and the time to create these experiences, so this massive opportunity is funneled into a very narrow pipeline,” Talespin CEO Kyle Jackson told ARPost. “Internally, we’ve seen a 95-97% reduction in time to create [with AI tools].”

Talespin isn’t introducing these tools to put themselves out of business. On the contrary, Jackson said that his team is able to be even more involved in helping companies workshop their experiences because his team is spending less time building the experiences themselves. Jackson further said this is only one example of a shift happening to more and more jobs.

“What should we be doing to make ourselves more valuable as these things shift? … It’s really about metacognition,” said Jackson. “Our place flipped from needing to know the answer to needing to know the question.”

Artificial Intelligence and Individual Creators

DEVAR launched MyWebAR in 2021 as a no-code authoring tool for WebAR experiences. In the spring of 2023, that platform became more powerful with a neural network for AR object creation.

In creating a 3D asset from a prompt, the network determines the necessary polygon count and replicates the texture. The resulting 3D asset can exist in AR experiences and serve as a marker itself for second-layer experiences.

“A designer today is someone who can not just draw, but describe. Today, it’s the same in XR,” DEVAR founder and CEO Anna Belova told ARPost. “Our goal is to make this available to everyone … you just need to open your imagination.”

Blurring the Lines

“From strictly the making a world aspect, AI takes on a lot of the work,” Mirrorscape CEO Grant Anderson told ARPost. “Making all of these models and environments takes a lot of time and money, so AI is a magic bullet.”

Mirroscape is looking to “bring your tabletop game to life with immersive 3D augmented reality.” Of course, much of the beauty of tabletop games come from the fact that players are creating their own worlds and characters as they go along. While the roleplaying element has been reproduced by other platforms, Mirrorscape is bringing in the individual creativity through AI.

“We’re all about user-created content, and I think in the end AI is really going to revolutionize that,” said Grant. “It’s going to blur the lines around what a game publisher is.”

Even for those who are professional builders but who might be independent or just starting out, artificial intelligence, whether to create assets or just for ideation, can help level the playing field. That was a theme of a recent Zapworks workshop “Can AI Unlock Your Creating Potential? Augmenting Reality With AI Tools.”

“AI is now giving individuals like me and all of you sort of superpowers to compete with collectives,” Zappar executive creative director Andre Assalino said during the workshop. “If I was a one-man band, if I was starting off with my own little design firm or whatever, if it’s just me freelancing, I now will be able to do so much more than I could five years ago.”

NeRFs

Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) weren’t included in the introduction because they can be seen as a combination of generative AI and computer vision. It starts out with a special kind of neural network called a multilayer perceptron (MLP). A “neural network” is any artificial intelligence that’s based off of the human brain, and an MLP is … well, look at it this way:

If you’ve ever taken an engineering course, or even a highschool shop class, you’ve been introduced to drafting. Technical drawings represent a 3D structure as a series of 2D images, each showing different angles of the 3D structure. Over time, you can get pretty good at visualizing the complete structure from these flat images. An MLP can do the same thing.

The difference is the output. When a human does this, the output is a thought – a spatial understanding of the object in your mind’s eye. When an MLP does this, the output is a NeRF – a 3D rendering generated from the 2D images.

Early on, this meant feeding countless images into the MLP. However, in the summer of 2022, Apple and the University of British Columbia developed a way to do it with one video. Their approach was specifically interested in generating 3D models of people from video clips for use in AR applications.

Whether a NeRF recreates a human or an object, it’s quickly becoming the fastest and easiest way to make digital twins. Of course, the only downside is that NeRF can only create digital models of things that already exist in the physical world.

Digital Twins and Simulation

Digital twins can be built with or without artificial intelligence. However, some use cases of digital twins are powered by AI. These include simulations like optimization and disaster readiness. For example, a digital twin of a real campus can be created, but then modified on a computer to maximize production or minimize risk in different simulated scenarios.

“You can do things like scan in areas of a refinery, but then create optimized versions of that refinery … and have different simulations of things happening,” MeetKai co-founder and executive chairwoman Weili Dai told ARPost in a recent interview.

A recent suite of authoring tools launched by the company (which started in AI before branching into XR solutions) includes AI-powered tools for creating virtual environments from the virtual world. These can be left as exact digital twins, or they can be edited to streamline the production of more fantastic virtual worlds by providing a foundation built in reality.

Large Language Models

Large Language Models take in language prompts and return language responses. This is on the list of AI interactions that runs largely under the hood so that, ideally, users don’t realize that they’re interacting with AI. For example, large language models could be the future of NPC interactions and “non-human agents” that help us navigate vast virtual worlds.

“In these virtual world environments, people are often more comfortable talking to virtual agents,” Inworld AI CEO Ilya Gelfenbeyn told ARPost in a recent interview. “In many cases, they are acting in some service roles and they are preferable [to human agents].”

Inworld AI makes brains that can animate Ready Player Me avatars in virtual worlds. Creators get to decide what the artificial intelligence knows – or what information it can access from the web – and what its personality is like as it walks and talks its way through the virtual landscape.

“You basically are teaching an actor how it is supposed to behave,” Inworld CPO Kylan Gibbs told ARPost.

Large language models are also used by developers to speed up back-end processes like generating code.

How XR Gives Back

So far, we’ve talked about ways in which artificial intelligence makes XR experiences better. However, the opposite is also true, with XR helping to strengthen AI for other uses and applications.

Evolving AI

We’ve already seen that some approaches to artificial intelligence are modeled after the human brain. We know that the human brain developed essentially through trial and error as it rose to meet the needs of our early ancestors. So, what if virtual brains had the same opportunity?

Martine Rothblatt PhD reports that very opportunity in the excellent book “Virtually Human: The Promise – and the Peril – of Digital Immortality”:

“[Academics] have even programmed elements of autonomy and empathy into computers. They even create artificial software worlds in which they attempt to mimic natural selection. In these artificial worlds, software structures compete for resources, undergo mutations, and evolve. Experimenters are hopeful that consciousness will evolve in their software as it did in biology, with vastly greater speed.”

Feeding AI

Like any emerging technology, people’s expectations of artificial intelligence can grow faster than AI’s actual capabilities. AI learns by having data entered into it. Lots of data.

For some applications, there is a lot of extant data for artificial intelligence to learn from. But, sometimes, the answers that people want from AI don’t exist yet as data from the physical world.

“One sort of major issue of training AI is the lack of data,” Treble Technologies CEO Finnur Pind told ARPost in a recent interview.

Treble Technologies works with creating realistic sound in virtual environments. To train an artificial intelligence to work with sound, it needs audio files. Historically, these were painstakingly sampled with different things causing different sounds in different environments.

Usually, during the early design phases, an architect or automotive designer will approach Treble to predict what audio will sound like in a future space. However, Treble can also use its software to generate specific sounds in specific environments to train artificial intelligence without all of the time and labor-intensive sampling. Pinur calls this “synthetic data generation.”

The AI-XR Relationship Is “and” Not “or”

Holding up artificial intelligence as the new technology on the block that somehow takes away from XR is an interesting narrative. However, experts are in agreement that these two emerging technologies reinforce each other – they don’t compete. XR helps AI grow in new and fantastic ways, while AI makes XR tools more powerful and more accessible. There’s room for both.

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How Retailers are Using Augmented Reality to Enhance In-Store Shopping

augmented reality, featured, Guest Post, Retail, Retail & E-Commerce, shopping / Ryan Harris / June 20, 2023

The retail sector is changing because of augmented reality technology, which is giving businesses new and interesting ways to interact with customers and enhance their shopping experiences. AR is a perfect fit for the retail sector, giving businesses new opportunities to communicate with customers, promote their goods, and increase sales.

AR in Retail: A Match Made in Heaven

Customers may virtually try on things, allowing them to see how a product appears or fits without having to try it on physically, which is one of the main advantages of AR in retail.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, more customers are looking for ways to try on things without having to physically engage with them, making this issue more crucial than ever. Retailers may improve their conversion rates and lower the percentage of returns by offering customers virtual try-on experiences.

Virtual Try-Ons and Interactive Product Displays

Virtual try-on and interactive product displays are two of the major ways that businesses are leveraging AR technology to improve the in-store shopping experience.

Using AR technology, shops can develop virtual try-on experiences that allow customers to see how an item of clothing or accessory would fit on their body without having to try it on physically.

the author trying augmented reality glasses — *Example product display. The author trying glasses using Geenee AR Glasses Try-On*

Virtual try-on is very handy for things like glasses, makeup, and apparel. Retailers may boost the likelihood of a sale and lower the percentage of returns by allowing shoppers to see how these things would look on them.

Retailers are also embracing AR technology to improve the in-store shopping experience through interactive product displays. They can take numerous forms, such as augmented reality mirrors that allow consumers to experiment visually on makeup or interactive product displays that allow buyers to see the features and benefits of a product in real time.

Retailers may boost customer engagement and create a more memorable shopping experience by developing such kinds of interactive activities. This can result in improved consumer loyalty and sales.

While virtual try-ons and interactive product displays hold enormous promise for merchants, there are still obstacles to overcome. For example, implementing the technology can be costly, and creating experiences that function seamlessly across multiple devices can be tricky.

Personalized Shopping Experience

AR technology is also being used to deliver a more personalized shopping experience for customers. Retailers, for example, might construct AR-powered shopping assistants who guide clients through the store, making tailored recommendations and presenting information about things they might be interested in.

7-eleven deadpool augmented reality — *In 2018, 7-Eleven launched its first-ever augmented reality in-store experience bringing Deadpool into the store.*

AR technology can also be utilized to build customized product displays that showcase products based on the customer’s specific interests. Retailers can develop displays that highlight products that the buyer is likely to be interested in using customer data and AI algorithms, improving the possibility of a sale.

The fundamental problem of using AR technology to improve product discovery and personalization is the necessity for reliable and complete data. Retailers must have access to customer data and be able to analyze it efficiently in order to deliver customized suggestions and product displays to customers.

Future of Augmented Reality in Retail

The future of augmented reality in retail is bright, with enormous potential to revolutionize the way we purchase. We should expect to see more innovative applications of AR in retail as technology advances, providing customers with tailored and engaging experiences.

The integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning is one of the most significant areas of research in AR for retail. AI can improve the accuracy and speed at which AR-powered product suggestions and customization are made. Retailers can use artificial intelligence-powered augmented reality to deliver personalized suggestions based on a customer’s purchase history, browsing habits, and preferences.

The launch of web-based AR is another fascinating trend in retail AR. WebAR eliminates the requirement for clients to download an app, making it more accessible and convenient. WebAR may be quickly implemented into a retailer’s website, offering customers an immersive and engaging buying experience.

Geenee augmented reality virtual try-on Zara — *Virtual try-on demo skirt project*

WebAR for In-Home Retail

A web-based placement of AR technology overcomes these obstacles and has the potential to transform the retail business. That allows you to try on clothes without even going to the retail itself.

Accessibility is one of the most difficult challenges associated with traditional AR adoption. Customers must download a specialized app to access AR content in traditional AR applications. This approach can be time-consuming and inconvenient, resulting in poor adoption rates.

WebAR solves this issue by removing the necessity for clients to download an app. Instead, users may access WebAR directly from a retailer’s website, making it more accessible and convenient. This method not only saves time but also raises the possibility of adoption by making AR technology more accessible to a larger audience.

An additional significant barrier to the widespread adoption of traditional augmented reality in retail is the high development costs associated with developing AR applications for different app platforms. The development of specialized multiple AR apps takes a significant amount of time and money, making it prohibitively expensive for many merchants.

WebAR overcomes this issue by leveraging current web technologies and frameworks that produce AR experiences, such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. This method lowers the development expenses associated with standard AR implementation, allowing merchants to build engaging and immersive experiences at a fraction of the cost.

Due to the specific hardware and software needed for traditional AR implementation, many devices cannot use it. Because of this incompatibility, the potential audience for AR experiences is reduced, and the impact of AR in retail is limited.

WebAR resolves this issue by taking advantage of modern web browsers, allowing it to be compatible with a wide range of devices such as smartphones, tablets, and desktop PCs. This method enables merchants to build AR experiences that are more accessible to a wider audience, which improves the effect of AR in retail.

Conclusion

In conclusion, augmented reality technology has the potential to transform the retail sector completely. We can anticipate a substantial change in the way we buy as shops continue to experiment with new AR applications. This change will make shopping more immersive, interactive, and personalized.

Guest Post

About the Guest Author(s)

Vladislav Bondarenko

Vladislav has been working for more than 3 years in the AR industry. He is currently on the founding team of AR startup Geenee. He specializes in 3D engineering, computer vision, and physics programming.

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AR Gaming, a Formidable Force That’s Changing the Gaming Industry

AR games, augmented reality, featured, gaming / Ryan Harris / June 15, 2023

AR gaming has changed greatly since the release of Pokémon GO. At the height of its popularity, Pokémon GO had more users compared to Twitter, and people were spending more time playing the game than browsing Facebook. It was even more popular than Candy Crush in the US, having nearly 21 million daily active users.

The Growing Popularity of AR Gaming

Since Pokémon GO, many other AR games have been released, owing to the increasing demand for AR gaming. In a message shared with ARPost, Chief CX Innovation Officer and MD of Gaming at Arise and Arise Gaming, Jonathan Shroyer, remarked that the popularity of Pokémon GO was a “cultural phenomenon in many ways.”

According to Shroyer, people who didn’t like playing video games were now spending hours playing Pokémon GO. Moreover, they were becoming more active, walking an average of close to 1,500 extra steps daily and engaging with their respective communities more often.

“We also saw a boost in local economies and overall cultural awareness as people got outside and did things they normally wouldn’t do in their day-to-day lives,” he added.

Augmented reality gaming continues to grow in popularity and it’s projected to reach a value of up to $274.4 billion by 2027. One contributor to its AR gaming’s popularity is that players don’t need to don or purchase special equipment, unlike with VR. Other potential factors contributing to the industry’s growth include the rising popularity of mobile games, advancements in game development, and the integration of AR games with other industries.

How AR Gaming Is Changing the Face of the Gaming Industry

AR gaming offers a more interactive and immersive way for gamers to engage with games. This technology, coupled with VR, has allowed players to go beyond the screen and into an immersive world where they’re able to engage with both the game and the characters within it.

Moreover, it’s become a social phenomenon, allowing players to interact with others in virtual worlds. In turn, this allows them to connect with others who share the same interests. Plus, given that players can access AR games via mobile, this gives them more opportunities to explore new physical and virtual environments.

But what makes augmented reality gaming so intriguing?

“AR gaming really is a fantastic way to combine the excitement of video games with reality, effectively changing the way we game and think about video games in general,” said Shroyer. He added that augmented reality gaming has allowed “people to experience a world within our reality” and that with AR gaming, gamers can literally go outside and take part in a hybrid world.

This is what makes AR gaming very appealing to people in general, not just to gamers, and is a crucial driving force in the transformation of the industry.

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Hexa and Amazon Redefine Immersive Retail Experiences by Empowering Merchants

Amazon, AR shopping, augmented reality, e-commerce, featured, News, Retail, Retail & E-Commerce / Mike M. / June 13, 2023

Step into the captivating realm of immersive retail, where customers are transported to a world beyond the traditional confines of e-commerce.

Virtual try-ons and mesmerizing augmented reality simulations have long held the attention of shoppers, but the path to these enchanting encounters was often reserved for big brands with substantial resources.

Today, a transformative alliance between 3D visualization platform Hexa and e-commerce powerhouse Amazon is breaking down the barriers of immersive retail. This dynamic collaboration is poised to redefine how merchants engage with their customers, unveiling a future where extraordinary shopping experiences are within reach of all.

Hexa: Shaping the Future of 3D Commerce and Immersive Retail

At the heart of this collaboration lies Hexa, a 3D visualization platform that uses artificial intelligence to create digital twins.

Since 2018, Hexa has been leveraging the potential of AI to breathe life into static 2D images and transform them into mesmerizing 3D renderings. They have been enabling brands to display 3D products, launch AR experiences, set up virtual try-ons, and create immersive marketing campaigns.

With Hexa, brands no longer need to rely on expensive investments in software and equipment to provide immersive retail experiences. They can harness the power of AI through Hexa’s cutting-edge technology to captivate their customers.

By seamlessly bridging the gap between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional domains, Hexa empowers brands to create hyper-realistic digital twins of their products. The sheer realism of Hexa’s CGI technology leaves consumers unable to discern the difference.

Hexa’s commitment to merging the realms of 2D and 3D not only expands possibilities for brands but also redefines the very nature of immersive retail experiences. It is through this collaboration that Hexa and its partners reimagine the boundaries of what is possible, driving the industry forward and transforming the way we perceive and engage with products in the digital space.

The Hexa and Amazon Collaboration: Empowering Merchants in The Era of Immersive Retail

Recognizing the untapped potential of immersive retail experiences in online marketplaces, Hexa has partnered with Amazon to empower merchants like never before. Through this collaboration, selling partners gain access to Hexa’s proprietary immersive OS, enabling them to create and display hyper-realistic 3D images, immersive 360-degree views, virtual try-on capabilities, and AR content directly on their Amazon product pages.

“Working with Amazon has opened up a whole new distribution channel for our partners,” said Gavin Goodvach, Hexa’s Vice President of Partnerships, in a press release shared with ARPost. “Brands now have the ability to distribute 3D experiences and deliver high quantity immersive shopping to Amazon’s global network of customers using Hexa’s proprietary content delivery network.”

Even without prior experience with AR or 3D tech, Amazon sellers can render high-quality images and videos for their product pages. They simply need to upload their products’ Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASIN) into the CMS of Hexa.

The system automatically converts the images into high-fidelity 3D models with AR compatibility. They can then use the 3D models for e-commerce and metaverse applications. This remarkable integration of technology bridges the gap between the tangible and the virtual, offering a transformative user experience that drives conversion rates to new heights.

“In addition to 3D reconstruction, further enhancements to Hexa’s 3D tech stack also allow Amazon selling partners to render high-definition marketing materials, including packshots and lifestyle images directly from their 3D digital twins,” said Hexa’s CTO, Jonathan Clark. “They’ll be able to do so by leveraging AWS Thinkbox render infrastructure and advanced capabilities.”

Unveiling the Incredible Potential of Immersive Retail

This collaboration between Hexa and Amazon marks a significant milestone in the evolution of immersive retail. By providing Amazon selling partners with the tools to seamlessly transition from 2D to 3D, the partnership unlocks endless ways brands can engage their customers.

Hexa and Amazon immersive retail AR, try-on, 3D

No longer constrained by financial limitations, merchants of all sizes can now provide unforgettable shopping experiences that rival those of industry giants.

Looking ahead, the future of immersive retail holds incredible potential. As technology continues to advance, we can anticipate even more seamless integrations, heightened realism, and enhanced customer interactions.

Hexa and Amazon have set a precedent for innovation and accessibility in the industry, inspiring other platforms and retailers to follow suit and embrace the transformative power of immersive shopping experiences.

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ZERO10 to Debut Its First AR Store at Viva Technology in Paris

augmented reality, Beauty & Fashion, fashion, featured, Retail, Retail & E-Commerce, shopping, try-on / Mike M. / June 12, 2023

After the successful showing of its AR try-on technology at the Metaverse Fashion Week, AR fashion company ZERO10 is launching its first prototype AR Store that aims to bring a whole new experience to shopping.

Following previous successful collaborations with fashion brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Coach – which saw the launch of the brand’s AR Mirror and Storefront, respectively – ZERO10 is now debuting the AR Mirror as a standalone store.

AR Storefront ZERO10

“We believe that 50% of physical retail will incorporate AR solutions or will become AR stores itself in the next 10 years,” said CEO of ZERO10 George Yashin. “Customers want to try new types of shopping and augmented reality will elevate the future in-store experience. We see the technology as a powerful tool for retail and we are still at the beginning.”

The prototype AR Store aims to be an immersive solution for retail stores while also addressing the common issues that come with brick-and-mortar establishments. This iteration of the AR Mirror is particularly notable for its ability to deliver a standalone retail experience, in contrast to simply enhancing the experience of shopping in a traditional store.

AR Store for a Full AR Shopping Experience

ZERO10 has been steadily growing with its AR-to-physical capabilities, befitting a fashion company that seeks to improve everything about the retail experience. Already a thriving hub for forward-thinking fashion designers, the AR Store represents the exciting possibilities of a full augmented reality shopping experience.

With a simple setup (requiring only the AR Mirror, an iPad stand, a statistics screen, and storage space), the prototype AR Store promises to deliver a seamless shopping experience without the need for large floor space. With its minimal requirements for both space and construction, the AR Store will be able to deliver all the functions and operations seen in a traditional store with an average of 100 sq meters, all with just two square meters of total store space.

AR Mirror ZERO10

All of this is possible thanks to ZERO10’s proprietary AR Mirror solution, which can run complex computer vision models and render clothing in 4K resolution. It does all of this in real-time, powered by a supercomputer that boasts the latest in 3D body tracking and multi-class segmentation capabilities.

The Future Of Brick-And-Mortar Stores?

Traditional storefronts may no longer be enough by themselves to entice consumers to shop at their establishments. Many retailers have started embracing the capabilities of augmented reality and other similar technologies to enrich the customer experience and help them stand out compared to their peers.

This phenomenon (tentatively called v-commerce) not only enriches the usual in-store experience but solves many of the issues that brick-and-mortar establishments face. Storage space, floor traffic, and even employee tasks become far easier to manage with the help of AR technology.

While it’s difficult to say that AR solutions like AR Mirrors and ZERO10’s AR Store will render brick-and-mortar establishments obsolete, it’s fair to say that they’re a development in the retail shopping experience that can’t be ignored.

Forward-Facing Fashion at Viva Technology Europe

ZERO10’s AR Store prototype will be interactable for the first time at Viva Technology, Europe’s biggest startup and tech event, taking place June 14- 17, in Paris, France. The prototype will be located in Innovation Park, ALLÉE NORD, Digital Experiences and AI, stand J61-007.

Visitors at Viva Technology will be able to experience the entire customer journey of the AR Store, starting with trying on the digital merch ZERO10 created together with Viva Technology, also available physically with limited stock.

Following the virtual try-on with the AR Mirror, customers will be able to initiate the imitation of a real purchase, where they will be able to select their sizing and receive a free physical analog of their selected item at the reception desk.

With this, ZERO10 hopes to make more people see the possibilities of AR retail experiences and use AR technology to enrich the normal fashion shopping experience.

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Geenee AR Launches Advanced Virtual Try-On Solutions for E-Commerce and Retail

augmented reality, e-commerce, featured, Retail, Retail & E-Commerce, try-on, webAR / Ryan Harris / June 9, 2023

In the online shopping era, the one thing missing from a perfect shopping experience was a realistic way of trying on products remotely. Thanks to augmented reality and virtual try-on solutions (VTO), this is no longer an issue.

Various AR and WebAR development companies allow retailers and e-commerce brands to offer their customers a highly realistic way of trying various products. From clothes and shoes to makeup and home goods, consumers are able to make an informed shopping decision after using these solutions.

Geenee AR, a WebAR technology company, has recently announced a comprehensive suite of immersive digital shopping solutions for e-commerce brands, including ads, online stores, and onsite mirrors.

Virtual Try-On Solutions Improve the Shopping Experience and Increase Sales

One of the biggest problems for online retailers is the large quantity of returned products. When it comes to clothes, footwear, eyewear, and accessories, many consumers find that they don’t make a good fit for their body type. Or, once they try on the product, they don’t get the look they envisioned when they saw the product in the online store, presented by a model.

With virtual try-on solutions, consumers are able to have a more realistic idea of how they’d look wearing each product. This reduces the number of product returns and increases customer loyalty.

However, until recently, most, though not all, AR try-on solutions were usually focused on a specific type of product: be it makeup, eyewear, hairstyle, clothing, or jewelry.

Geenee’s Virtual Try-On Solutions

With the new suite of virtual try-on solutions, retailers and e-commerce brands can offer their customers a complete experience. Geenee’s virtual try-on solutions include full-body virtual try-on for products like T-shirts, dresses, skirts, pants, jackets, and sweaters, as well as try-on for beauty products and accessories such as handbags, jewelry, glasses, and hats, and other headworn accessories.

full body virtual try-on Geenee AR

Moreover, the company’s virtual try-on solutions are size-inclusive and support a wide range of body types. This is extremely important for customers who want to look not just for the right size, but for garments that compliment their body and make them feel more confident.

“Augmented reality helps consumers make informed and confident purchasing decisions faster than ever before,” said Heather Lipner, Geenee AR’s Head of Product Design and Creative, in a press release shared with ARPost. “Will it fit? Will it look good? To see how something looks on your own face or body will trigger the confidence to purchase – the key driver for e-commerce success.”

In addition to virtual try-on, the company also offers true-size AR for home goods like furniture and appliances.

Key Features of Geenee’s Virtual Try-On Solutions

Geenee offers a complete suite of solutions for online and offline retail stores. The main features of the virtual try-on solutions include:

E-commerce point of sale – web-based full body and face tracking, allowing customers to try all types of products, from head to feet;
Onsite mirrors – AR mirrors which allow customers to try on products in store without going to a changing booth;
Embedded ads – thanks to the company’s partnership with AudienceX, brands can offer virtual try-on experiences within their online ads across various websites and social media platforms.

Brands Report Positive Results After Implementing the VTO Solutions

So far, several fashion, beauty, and home goods brands have used Geenee’s virtual try-on solutions, and some of the results they shared with the company include:

For eyewear: 81% increase in add-to-cart;
For fashion products: 24% decrease in returned products;
For accessories: a 25% increase in conversion rates;
For home goods: a 67% increase in conversions and a 38% decrease in product returns.

virtual try-on accessories Geenee AR

These results confirm the vision of the CTO of Geenee, Evgeny Peshkov.

“Virtual try-on brings e-commerce to the next level. Being able to see how something actually fits rather than guessing based on 2D photos simplifies the customer’s decision,” Peshkov said. “The number of advanced techniques built and fine-tuned specifically for this task allow for a high level of realism and fidelity. Geenee’s web-first VTO solution is ready out-of-the-box and can be easily integrated with any e-commerce platform.”

Experience Virtual Try-On by Geenee

Geeenee AR offers both brands and consumers the chance to test their latest VTO solutions. Anyone can test a demo version on a desktop or mobile here.

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Is the Age of the QR Code Over (Again)?

AR platform, augmented reality, featured, webAR / Ryan Harris / June 8, 2023

The QR code has had its ups and downs in consumer AR. These grid icons scanned through the camera on a mobile device or XR headset provide a faster and easier way to access online content than typing in a URL.

However, they have their shortcomings in industry applications and can limit the accessibility and usability of increasingly connected physical environments for the typical user. That’s why AR companies including Taqtile and DEVAR are working on alternatives.

QR Codes in Enterprise

QR codes in many low-impact and sheltered areas do the job for things like indoor navigation. Because of their ease of use, they are also often employed in field applications. In these applications, the codes may pull up guided instructions, informational content, or other resources for deskless workers.

However, on rugged machinery or when used outdoors, QR codes may become faded by environmental exposure, damaged or worn down, or may be difficult for service workers to locate. Because they link to online content, they can also pose a security risk in some applications.

“Because phones and cameras can read QR codes, they can be used to identify equipment,” Taqtile Chief Business Officer, Kelly Malone, told ARPost. “Removing this form of physical identification can reduce exposure of a unique vehicle or asset.”

To solve these problems, Taqtile developed Touch Alignment for its Manifest platform. The service allows users to identify three points on a piece of equipment that can be recognized by XR glasses or smart devices in the same way that a QR code would be. Touch Alignment works alongside Manifest’s other image-recognition abilities for identifiers like serial numbers.

Touch Alignment in Manifest

“With Touch Alignment, Manifest customers use physical locations on equipment as reference points to access virtual assets,” reads a release from Taqtile. “A series of three customer-assigned alignment points specific to the particular piece of equipment, or class of identical equipment such as a vehicle model, replaces the QR codes.”

augmented reality touch-alignment by Taqtile

According to the Taqtile representative, the company hasn’t recognized a limit on how close together or far apart the alignment points need to be, though “more than 12-18 inches between points provides the best alignment accuracy on larger pieces of equipment.” With the help of the operator, Touch Alignment still works if one or more of the alignment points are obscured.

“If there’s damage, a human approximation of where the point ‘should or would be’ is likely more accurate and, even if it’s not precise,Touch Alignment is forgiving enough to still be useful and provide directional/spatial assistance,” said Malone.

QR Codes “in the Wild”

QR codes are good for bringing up information about an environment because they are relatively small. However, they aren’t the best for bringing up information about an object. The code needs to be placed on an object, potentially obscuring it, or off of an object potentially losing context.

Recognition of the object itself would eliminate the need for any external marker. And, thanks to advances in computer vision, this technology is already coming to WebAR authoring tool MyWebAR by DEVAR.

MyWebAR’s 3D Object Tracking

“With an AR headset, you can see the world in real time, while the designed AR content completes your experience,” DEVAR founder and CTO Andrei Komissarov said in a release shared with ARPost. “3D object tracking is a logical milestone for us on our way and opens up huge opportunities for new industries in augmented reality.”

Devar - MyWebAR - 3D object tracking

The new capability recognizes physical objects when provided with a 3D model of the same object. The technology is currently in an early-access period for interested members of MyWebAR’s Enterprise subscribers. Early images of the technology show effects like lenses applied to figurines, but other use cases are potentially endless.

Replacing the QR Code?

There are still applications where QR codes work just fine. And, some people are still going to prefer them in some use cases. So, Taqtile and DEVAR will both continue to support visual markers on their platforms with their new markerless solutions serving as optional alternatives.

“We’ll continue to support QR codes for companies that prefer them, but we also want to provide a more elegant way to spatially anchor AR content, facilitating easier, more consistently available paths to access Manifest work instructions,” Taqtile CTO John Tomizuka said in the release.

Taqtile is also working on expanding the availability of Touch Alignment to more of its offered platforms, which are used more widely by customers and are often used together with Manifest.

“We plan to make it available to all the platforms that we support as long as it is useful for our customers. There are some dependencies that we have in terms of relying on how good the hand tracking is, as well as other factors like usability that will affect that decision,” said Tomizuka. “Ultimately, we want to have consistent concepts and processes on all the platforms that we support.”

Shared material from DEVAR similarly says that “we cannot disclose the full details about everything we have under development,” but further development on the company’s roadmap “allows us to take interaction with the real world and augmented reality content to a whole new level.”

The Next Major Tracking Solution?

Touch Alignment works as an enterprise solution because it works on large objects and maintains security of potentially sensitive information. MyWebAR’s 3D object tracking works as a consumer solution because it’s fast, easy, and works on smaller objects.

As we so often see with developments in XR, these QR code replacement solutions aren’t a case of two companies competing but rather different providers solving the same problem for different users and use cases.

Is the Age of the QR Code Over (Again)? Read More »

Celebrating the 2023 Auggie Awards and XR Prize Challenge

AR/VR events, auggie awards, augmented reality, AWE, Events, featured, trending, virtual reality / Ryan Harris / June 7, 2023

The Augmented World Expo has its own awards ceremony – the Auggie Awards. Watchers of the XR space submit nominations and vote for their favorites. A panel of distinguished judges then selects the winners from among the finalists. Or, at least, that’s how it works for the first 16 categories.

The Best in Show awards, the XR Startup to Watch, and a few other Auggie Awards are determined differently. This year also saw the award of the XR Prize Challenge that AWE founder and CEO Ori Inbar announced last year.

The 14th Annual Auggie Awards

“I’m super excited to be hosting the Auggie Awards ceremony for the 14th year,” said Inbar. “The Auggie Awards have been recognizing XR since 2010.”

Ori Inbar and Auggies

Inbar shared that there were a record 377 nominations this year, which public voting narrowed down to 89 finalists before 30 judges chose the 16 winners. Or, the 13 winners, as one organization left with a record-breaking three awards.

Auggie Awards 2023 judges

Best Art or Film

Developer, entrepreneur, and consultant Antony Vitillo, perhaps better known as “Skarred Ghost”, presented the first Auggie Award of the night for Best Art or Film.

“I totally love storytelling experiences and the emotions they give me,” said Vitillo.

The Auggie Award went to Delta Reality for The Museum of Digital Life. The massive multi-user art exhibit includes everything from 2D photographs to 3D objects and virtual worlds. Delta Reality was also nominated in the same category for The Metaverse Park and was up for Best Enterprise Solution and Best in Location-Based Entertainment.

The group won over Mutienliao, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Ferryman Collective. Unfortunately, no one from Delta Reality was present to accept the award.

Best Campaign

It was the “great pleasure” of University of South Australia Professor of Computer Human Interaction Mark Billinghurst to present the Auggie Award for Best Campaign. The award went to Zappar for Countdown: Bricks Farm. The interactive game for a New Zealand Supermarket included social lenses, games, and recipes.

Ori Inbar, Caspar Thykier, and Mark Billinghurst

“We talk about technology, but it’s all about the people,” Zappar CEO and co-founder Caspar Thykier said in accepting the award.

The experience beat out two experiences by CamOn XR and an experience by Viewtoo, as well as another Zappar experience that had also been nominated. Zappar was also up for Auggie Awards in the categories of Best Creator & Authoring Tool, Best Developer Tool, Best Headworn Device, Best in Location-Based Entertainment, and Best Societal Impact.

Best Collaboration Tool

Sony Electronics Head of XR Business Development Thaisa Yamamura was “honored to present” the Auggie Award for Best Collaboration Tool. She also presented the winner with a 15.6in Sony Spatial Reality Display.

The Auggie Award went to Pfizer for VR collaboration tools used in developing the COVID-19 vaccine, and was accepted by a representative of the company. Also nominated were Arthur, Morpheus, Holo-Light, and R3DT GmbH.

Best Consumer App

“We spend a lot of time talking about enterprise XR, and for good reason, but the consumer market is where things really scale,” XR analyst Mike Boland said in introducing the Best Consumer App category.

The Central Library of Düsseldorf App, by Exponential Dimensions, took home this award, despite facing stiff competition from the likes of Snap Inc. and Overlay LLC. The Auggie Award was accepted in person by a representative of the City of Düsseldorf.

Best Creator & Authoring Tool

“This is an exciting category because these are the tools we can all use to create amazing worlds for each other,” All These Worlds LLC founder Jackie Morie said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Creator & Authoring Tool.

The Auggie Award went to Snap Inc for Lens Studio with fellow nominees Overlay LLC, Zappar, HoloPundits, ARSOFT, and DEEPFINE. The award was accepted in person by a representative who passed on praise to the “300,000 AR creators creating with us.”

Best Developer Tool

Another Snap representative, Head of Platform Developer Relations Tessa Kriesel, took the stage next to present the Auggie Award for Best Developer Tool. This category could have gone to anybody with finalists Blippar, Zappar, 8th Wall, Holo-Light, and Qualcomm, but echo3D took home the prize.

echo3D Auggie Awards 2023

Best Enterprise Solution

“XR Tech has the power to change the way we work but only when we have enterprises who do the development and work to bring those projects to us,” AWE Advisory Council member Shelley Peterson said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Enterprise Solution.

Nominees in the packed category included Lowe’s Innovation Labs, Delta Reality, and HoloPundits, but Ajna Lense, an MR developer headset by Indian company Dimension NXG took the prize. The same headset was also a finalist in the Best Headword Device category.

Best Game or Toy

“This one has a special meaning to me as someone who has devoted his entire life to a toy,” skateboarder Rodney Mullen said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Game or Toy.

Resolution Games was nominated for both Demeo and Spatial Ops, ILMxLAB was nominated for StarWars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge, and DB Creations was nominated for Table Trenches. However, the prize went home with the team of Innersloth, Schell Games, and Robot Teddy for Among Us VR. Or, it will be mailed home, as no one accepted the award in person.

Best Headworn Device

Science fiction author Daniel Suarez had the honor of presenting one of the evening’s most anticipated Auggie Awards – and perhaps the one with the stiffest competition.

Zappar’s Zapbox, DigiLens’ ARGO, Sony’s PlayStation VR 2, the Magic Leap 2, XREAL (previously Nreal) Air, and the Varjo XR 3 Focal Edition were all in the running, but the prize went to the HTC VIVE XR Elite.

best headworn device Auggie Awards AWE 2023

“We’re just so happy. This is something we’ve been working on for a long time,” HTC China President Alvin Graylin said in accepting the award. “We’re so excited to be recognized here.”

Best in Healthcare and Wellness

XR Association President Elizabeth Hyman called the field of healthcare and wellness “a great way to change the world” in presenting the Auggie Award for this category. Nominees included Groove Jones and Lucid Reality Labs but the award went home with ARSOFT for NextMED – a tool for medical visualization.

best healthcare and wellness Auggie Awards AWE 2023

“We’re here from Spain just to be with so many interesting companies and amazing people,” founder and CEO Santiago González said in accepting the award.

Best in Location-Based Entertainment

“So many people find their first XR experience through LBEs,” Hopscotch Interactive CEO Emily Olman said in presenting the Auggie. “This is an amazing category that brings so many people into XR for the first time every single day.”

Nominees included ONTOP and Delta Reality, but Thykier returned to the stage to accept the award for LEGO MYTHICA Magic Forrest – Zappar’s second Auggie of the night.

Ori Inbar, Caspar Thykier, and Emily Olman

“It’s everyone’s dream to work with a property like LEGO,” said Thykier. “There’s a wonderful team there and they’ll be happy that we’ve won this.”

Best Indie Creator

“Without our indie creators, there would not be an industry,” GatherVerse Summit founder Christopher Lafayette said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Indie Creator. He also gave a “shoutout to our startups.”

In a field that included DB Creations and OnBoardXR, the prize went to Big Rock Creative, best known for bringing Burning Man into VR for the past three years. The producers, Doug Jacobson and Athena Demos gave brief speeches, but were accompanied onto the stage by a team of creators including the worldbuilding duo Cause and Christie.

Big Rock Creative

“We all start out as indie collaborators,” said Demos.

“I want to thank the whole team. We’re very excited to learn the language of storytelling in this new medium,” said Jacobs.

Best Interaction Product

“You guys are so lucky to have the XR devices and the ecosystem that you have out there,” Graylin said, returning to the stage to present the Auggie Award for Best Interaction Product. “These are good times.”

VIVE itself was nominated for their Self-Tracking Trackers, along with the likes of Leia Inc., SenseGlove, and Wisear. Graylin presented the award to TriLite for the Trixel 3, an impressively small projector for AR displays.

best interaction product Auggie Awards AWE 2023

“Thank you so much, AWE,” Head of Product Marketing and Business Development Susan Backhaus said in accepting the award. “This is a great recognition of our work.”

Best Snapdragon Spaces App

“We’ve been super impressed by the number and quality of applications we have seen,” Qualcomm’s Senior Director of XR Martin Herdina said in presenting the first Qualcomm-sponsored Auggie Award.

best snapdragon spaces Auggie Awards AWE 2023

The award went to Verizon for The Future of Training, an XR upskilling program. In this case, the Auggie also came with a $10,000 check from Qualcomm.

Best Societal Impact

Unity VP of Education and Social Impact Jessica Lindl said that “the world is a better place with more creatives in it,” as she prepared to award another of the evening’s most anticipated Auggies. The category had a number of repeat nominees including Lucid Reality Labs, with two experiences in this field, and Zappar for their Zapvision solution.

best societal impact Auggie Awards 2023

Thykier returned to the stage once again to accept the third Auggie Award of the night – beating the record that the company set last year. This time Thykier was accompanied by a number of Zappar representatives to accept the award that makes product information available to vision-impaired individuals through an enhanced QR code.

“We do a lot of exciting work at Zappar, but it’s amazing to do some important work,” said Thykier, who also gave special thanks to Unilever, the consumer packaged goods company that partnered with Zappar on the project. “This is the [Auggie] that is super important.”

Best Use of AI

“It came to the attention of the world recently that the singularity is underway,” AWE co-founder Tish Shute said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Use of AI. “There is a cycle where AI feeds XR and XR feeds AI. This is going to cause an acceleration that is mind-boggling, to say the least.”

best use of AI - Auggie Awards AWE 2023

With competition like Move.ai and Avataar, it was a tough field. The Auggie was awarded to Maxar Technologies for SYNTH3D – a high-fidelity world-scale digital twin created with satellite data.

The Startup Pitch Competition

“We had an incredible group of startups pitch,” Boost VC Partner Maddie Callander said in presenting the Startup to Watch Auggie. “It’s always exciting to see the cutting edge.”

Atopia won from among the 14 finalists for “creating the metaverse of arts and culture.” The Auggie was accepted by co-founder Annabell Vacano.

Ori Inbar, Maddie Callander, and Annabell Vacano

“We couldn’t have done this without our small team back in Germany,” said Vacano.

Best In Show

WXR Fund Managing Partner Amy Lameyer presented the Best In Show award. This award is presented during the event wrap-up and considers expo floor interest. The award went to Sightful, one of the companies behind Spacetop – a laptop that uses AR glasses in lieu of a screen.

The award was accepted in-person by the company’s co-founders Tomer Kahan and Tamir Berliner. Berliner talked about the growth of AWE and of XR generally, including the massive presence of XR hardware at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. He also referenced Ori’s end-of-show announcement that AWE will move from Santa Clara to Long Beach.

“I do want to thank everyone here, but Ori, also to you. I met you, I think it was AWE 2014 in Tel Aviv, I think that there were about a hundred people there – not speakers, attendees,” said Berliner. “I think the move to LA is messaging everyone that CES should watch out because Consumer Electronics is becoming AWE.”

The AWEsome Award

The AWEsome Award is determined by a “complex algorithm” that includes “buzz,” participation, expo floor interest, and other factors. The Auggie was presented by XREAL founder Peng Jin.

The award went to EXIT SUIT but was not accepted in person. Ori commented that exhibitors are often packing up their booths while the event wrap-up is under way.

Visual Impact

A special award, the “Visual Impact Award” was presented by NTT Ltd. Group Vice President of Connected Industry Rika Nakazawa to the XR artist best known as Sutu. Sutu had created the art used for promoting AWE but also used as the backdrop on the main stage.

“I’m so happy that Ori asked me to create the art,” said Sutu. “It’s been a journey. I was at AWE in the early days and to see what it’s become and to be a part of that, it’s been a journey.”

The XR Prize Challenge

Last year, Inbar announced The XR Prize Challenge: “A global competition to harness the power of XR to fight climate change” with a $100,000 grand prize. 230 projects were submitted. 150 of those advanced to the next level. 90 of those submitted a minimum viable product. Those were narrowed down to 11 finalists. In the end, there were three runners-up and one winner.

The runners-up and grand prize winners were announced in the categories Optimize, Educate, Visualize, and Replace. All runners-up received an Nvidia graphics card.

Optimize

Niantic VP of Business Development Jenna Seiden presented the runner-up in the Optimize category, saying that “the technologies that we’re celebrating tonight make the world more magical.”

incitu

The award went to inCitu, a project that shows immersive models of familiar locations in potential futures – for example, as impacted by rising sea levels due to climate change. An earlier version of the experience had first been demod at a 2019 AWE event in Munich.

Educate

IEEE Standards Association President Yu Yuan presented the runner up in the education category saying, “education is very important to get more people working with us in XR.” The award went to Mangrove City – a VR experience that helps users understand the ecological significance of wetlands.

mangrove city AWE 2023

Visualize

University of Oregon Assistant Professor of Immersive Media Psychology Danny Pimentel presented the runner up in the “Visualize” category.

“It was moving to see so many organizations and creators around the world leverage these technologies in such thoughtful ways,” said Pimentel.

Qikiqtaruk

The award went to Qikiqtaruk: Experiencing the Arctic Under Threat. The project brought in multiple co-creators to make a virtual tour of a national park that serves as an immediate example of the impacts of climate change.

The Grand Prize

Tom Furness, founder of the Virtual World Society, presented the Grand Prize to Between Two Worlds. The AR app helps users learn about endangered species, their habitats, and why they are endangered.

Another Year, Gone

That wrapped another year of the Auggie Awards and of the Augmented World Expo. Of course, events are coming up in Europe and Asia, as well as regional meetups and events that visitors can join on the AWE.live app. Until next year, it’s time to make some Auggies-worthy news for next time.

Celebrating the 2023 Auggie Awards and XR Prize Challenge Read More »

AWE USA 2023 Day Three: Eyes on Apple

AI, Apple Inc., AR/VR events, augmented reality, AWE, Events, extended reality, featured, Meta, trending / Ryan Harris / June 6, 2023

The last, third day of AWE USA 2023 took place on Friday, June 2. The first day of AWE is largely dominated by keynotes. A lot of air on the second day is taken up by the expo floor opening. By the third day, the keynotes are done, the expo floor starts to get packed away, and panel discussions and developer talks rule the day. And Apple ruled a lot of those talks.

Bracing for Impact From Apple

A big shift is expected this week as Apple is expected to announce its entrance into the XR market. The writing has been on the wall for a long time.

Rumors have probably been circulating for longer than many readers have even been watching XR. ARPost started speculating in 2018 on a 2019 release. Five years of radio silence later and we had reports that the product would be delayed indefinitely.

The rumor mill is back in operation with an expected launch this week (Apple’s WWDC23 starts today) – with many suggesting that Meta’s sudden announcement of the Quest 3 is a harbinger. Whether an Apple entrance is real this time or not, AWE is bracing itself.

Suspicion on Standards

Let’s take a step back and look at a conversation that happened on AWE USA 2023 Day Two, but is very pertinent to the emerging Apple narrative.

The “Building Open Standards for the Metaverse” panel moderated by Moor Insights and Strategy Senior Analyst Anshel Sag brought together XR Safety Initiative (XRSI) founder and CEO Kavya Pearlman, XRSI Advisor Elizabeth Rothman, and Khronos Group President Neil Trevett.

Apple’s tendency to operate outside of standards was discussed. Even prior to their entrance into the market, this has caused problems for XR app developers – Apple devices even have a different way of sensing depth than Android devices. XR glasses tend to come out first or only on Android in part because of Android’s more open ecosystem.

“Apple currently holds so much power that they could say ‘This is the way we’re going to go.’ and the Metaverse Standards Forum could stand up and say ‘No.’,” said Pearlman, expressing concern over accessibility of “the next generation of the internet”.

Trevett expressed a different approach, saying that standards should present the best option, not the only option. While standards are more useful the more groups use them, competition is helpful and shows diversity in the industry. And diversity in the industry is what sets Apple apart.

“If Apple does announce something, they’ll do a lot of education … it will progress how people use the tech whether they use open standards or not,” said Trevett. “If you don’t have a competitor on the proprietary end of the spectrum, that’s when you should start to worry because it means that no one cares enough about what you’re doing.”

Hope for New Displays

On Day Three, KGOn Tech LLC’s resident optics expert Karl Guttag presented an early morning developer session on “Optical Versus Passthrough Mixed Reality.” Guttag has been justifiably critical of Meta Quest Pro’s passthrough in particular. Even for optical XR, he expressed skepticism about a screen replacement, which is what the Apple headset is largely rumored to be.

karl guttag AWE 2023 Day 3 — *Karl Guttag*

“One of our biggest issues in the market is expectations vs. reality,” said Guttag. “What is hard in optical AR is easy in passthrough and vice versa. I see very little overlap in applications … there is also very little overlap in device requirements.”

A New Generation of Interaction

“The Quest 3 has finally been announced, which is great for everyone in the industry,” 3lbXR and 3lb Games CEO Robin Moulder said in her talk “Expand Your Reach: Ditch the Controllers and Jump into Mixed Reality.” “Next week is going to be a whole new level when Apple announces something – hopefully.”

robin moulder AWE 2023 Day 3 — *Robin Moulder*

Moulder presented the next round of headsets as the first of a generation that will hopefully be user-friendly enough to increase adoption and deployment bringing more users and creators into the XR ecosystem.

“By the time we have the Apple headset and the new Quest 3, everybody is going to be freaking out about how great hand tracking is and moving into this new world of possibilities,” said Moulder.

More on AI

AI isn’t distracting anyone from XR and Apple isn’t distracting anyone from AI. Apple appearing as a conference theme doesn’t mean that anyone was done talking about AI. If you’re sick of reading about AI, at least read the first section below.

Lucid Realities: A Glimpse Into the Current State of Generative AI

After two full days of people talking about how AI is a magical world generator that’s going to take the task of content creation off of the shoulders of builders, Microsoft Research Engineer Jasmine Roberts set the record straight.

jasmine roberts AWE 2023 — *Jasmine Roberts*

“We’ve passed through this techno-optimist state into dystopia and neither of those are good,” said Roberts. “When people think that [AI] can replace writers, it’s not really meant to do that. You still need human supervisors.”

AI not being able to do everything that a lot of people think it can isn’t the end of the world. A lot of the things that people want AI to do is already possible through other less glamorous tools.

“A lot of what people want from generative AI, they can actually get from procedural generation,” said Roberts. “There are some situations where you need bespoke assets so generative AI wouldn’t really cut it.”

Roberts isn’t against AI – her presentation was simply illustrating that it doesn’t work the way that some industry outsiders are being led to believe. That isn’t the same as saying that it doesn’t work. In fact, she brought a demo of an upcoming AI-powered Clippy. (You remember Clippy, right?)

Augmented Ecologies

Roberts was talking about the limitations of AI. The “Augmented Ecologies” panel moderated by AWE co-founder Tish Shute, saw Three Dog Labs founder Sean White, Morpheus XR CTO Anselm Hook, and Croquet founder and CTO David A. Smith talking about what happens when AI is the new dominant life form on planet Earth.

Tish Shute, Sean White, Anselm Hook, and David Smith - AWE 2023 Day 3 — *From left to right: Tish Shute, Sean White, Anselm Hook, and David Smith*

“We’re kind of moving to a probabilistic model, it’s less deterministic, which is much more in line with ecological models,” said White.

This talk presented the scenario in which developers are no longer the ones running the show. AI takes on a life of its own, and that life is more capable than ours.

“In an ecology, we’re not necessarily at the center, we’re part of the system,” said Hook. “We’re not necessarily able to dominate the technologies that are out there anymore.”

This might scare you, but it doesn’t scare Smith. Smith described a future in which AI becomes the legacy that can live in environments that humans never can, like the reaches of space.

“The metaverse and AI are going to redefine what it means to be human,” said Smith. “Ecosystems are not healthy if they are not evolving.”

“No Longer the Apex”

On the morning of Day Two, the Virtual World Society and the VR/AR Association hosted a very special breakfast. Invited were some of the most influential leaders in the immersive technology space. The goal was to discuss the health and future of the XR industry.

The findings will be presented in a report, but some of the concepts were also presented at “Spatial Computing for All” – a fireside chat with Virtual World Society Founder Tom Furness, HTC China President Alvin Graylin, and moderated by technology consultant Linda Ricci.

The major takeaway was that the industry insiders aren’t particularly worried about the next few years. After that, the way in which we do work might start to change and that might have to change the ways that we think about ourselves and value our identities in a changing society.

AWE Is Changing Too

During the show wrap-up, Ori Inbar had some big news. “AWE is leveling up to LA.” This was the fourteenth AWE. Every AWE, except for one year when the entire conference was virtual because of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been in Santa Clara. But, the conference has grown so much that it’s time to move.

AWE 2024 in LA

“I think we realized this year that we were kind of busting at the seams,” said Inbar. “We need a lot more space.”

The conference, which will take place from June 18-20 will be in Long Beach, with “super, super early bird tickets” available for the next few weeks.

Yes, There’s Still More

Most of the Auggie Awards and the winners of Inbar’s climate challenge were announced during a ceremony on the evening of Day Two. During the event wrap-up, the final three Auggies were awarded. We didn’t forget, we just didn’t have room for them in our coverage.

So, there is one final piece of AWE coverage just on the Auggies. Keep an eye out. Spoiler alert, Apple wasn’t nominated in any of the categories.

AWE USA 2023 Day Three: Eyes on Apple Read More »

AWE USA 2023 Day Two: More Keynotes, More Panels, and the Open Expo Floor

8th wall, AR/VR events, augmented reality, Events, extended reality, featured, Lenovo, magic leap, metaverse, niantic, trending, XR Safety Initiative / Ryan Harris / June 3, 2023

The second day of AWE is the day that the expo floor opens. That is always thrilling, and we’ll get there, but first – more keynotes and conversations.

AWE Day Two Keynotes

Day One kickstarted the keynotes, but AWE Day Two saw exciting presentations and announcements from Magic Leap and Niantic. Both affirmed a theme from the day before: meaningful XR is already here.

Magic Leap: Let’s Get to Work

“The vision of AR that some legacy tech companies are promising is still years out, is not years or months or days out,” Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson said in her keynote. “The small team at Magic Leap has made something that many larger companies are still struggling to achieve.”

Peggy Johnson, Magic Leap's CEO AWE Day 2 — *Peggy Johnson*

Johnson also continued another theme from AWE Day One: AI and XR aren’t in competition – they help each other. Inbar’s opening talk included a line that quickly became a motto for almost the whole event: “XR is the interface for AI.”

“I honestly believe AR systems are going to become the endpoints for a lot of AI,” said Johnson. “The ability to provide contract input and get contextual output will really be a game changer.”

Magic Leap’s big announcement wasn’t to do with AI, but it will still be thrilling to developers: an Unreal Engine plugin is coming in August.

“AR Everywhere” With Niantic

While enterprise companies and hardware manufacturers are still struggling with adoption to since degree, few companies have done as much for AR consumer adoption as Niantic.

Brian McClendon Niantic Labs AWE Day 2 — *Brian McClendon*

In his AWE keynote, “Empowering AR Everywhere”, Niantic Senior Vice President of Engineering, Brian McClendon, laid out a number of major updates coming to the company – as well as coming to or through 8th Wall.

First, ARDK 3.0 will allow developers using Niantic tools to also use outside AR asset libraries. It will also enable a QR code-triggered “lobby system” for multi-user shared AR experiences. The updated ARDK will enter a beta phase later this month. A new maps SDK compatible with Unity is also coming to 8th Wall.

Further, 8th Wall’s “Metaversal Deployment” announced at AWE 2021 is now compatible with mixed reality via Quest 2, Quest Pro, “and probably all future MR headsets.”

Big Picture Panel Discussions

One of the things that really makes AWE special is its ability to bring together the industry’s big thinkers. A number of insightful panel discussions from Day Two explored some of the biggest topics in XR today.

XR’s Inflection Point

The panel discussion “How Immersive Storytelling Can Deepen Human Understanding of Critical Issues” brought together Unity CEO John Riccitiello, journalist Ashlan Cousteau, and TRIPP CEO and co-founder Nanea Reeves. The talk included further affirmations that, contrary to some media pieces, XR as an industry is thriving.

John Riccitiello, Ashlan Cousteau, Nanea Reeves - AWE Day 2 — *From left to right: John Riccitiello, Ashlan Cousteau, and Nanea Reeves*

“I now cancel what I said seven years ago about this not being a good time to build a business in this space,” said Riccitiello. “We’re at a time right now where it makes a lot of sense to look forward with optimism around XR. … Companies are born around technology transitions.”

Reeves echoed the sentiment, but included some of the cautious caveats expressed by XR ethicist Kent Bye during a panel discussion yesterday.

“We’re at such an interesting point of technology and the evolution of it, especially with AI and XR,” said Reeves. “What’s the next level of storytelling and what should we be aware of as we bring AI into it?”

Building Open Standards for the Metaverse

The good news is that the metaverse isn’t dead. The bad news is that it arguably hasn’t been born yet either. One of the most important features of the metaverse is also one of its most elusive.

It was also the crux of a panel discussion bringing together XR Safety Initiative founder and CEO Kavya Pearlman, XRSI Advisor Elizabeth Rothman, and Khronos Group President Neil Trevett, moderated by Moor Insights and Strategy Senior Analyst Anshel Sag.

Kavya Pearlman, Neil Trevett, Elizabeth Rothman, and Anshel Sag - AWE 2023 Day 2 — *From left to right: Kavya Pearlman, Neil Trevett, Elizabeth Rothman, and Anshel Sag*

“Whichever way you come to the metaverse, you need interoperability,” said Trevett. “It’s foundational.”

The panel also addresses the lasting and fleeting effects of the wave of attention that has seemingly passed over the metaverse.

“We go through these hype cycles and bubbles,” said Rothman. “There are always technological innovations that come out of them.”

The panel also addressed AI, an overarching theme of the conference. However, the panel brought up one concern with the technology that had not been addressed elsewhere.

“This convergence has a way more visceral impact on children’s brains even than social media,” said Pearlman.

So far, the “solution” to this problem has been for content publishers to age-restrict experiences. However, this approach has crucial shortcomings. First, most approaches to age restrictions aren’t foolproof. Second, when they are, this measure excludes young users rather than protecting them.

“We run the risk of regulating children right out of the metaverse,” said Rothman. “We need to strike a balance.”

Hitting the AWE Floor

I first started covering AWE during the pandemic when the entire conference was virtual. AWE is a lot more fun in-person but, practically speaking, the demos are the only component that can’t really happen remotely.

Meeting Wol

I actually met Wol in the Niantic Lounge before the very first session on Day One. While this is where arranging this content makes sense to me, Wol was possibly my first impression of AWE. And it was a good one. But wait, who’s Wol?

Niantic Lounge AWE 2023 — *Niantic Lounge*

Wol is a collaboration between 8th Wall, Liquid City, and InWorld AI. He’s an artificially intelligent character virtually embodied as an owl. His only job is to educate people about the Redwood Forest but he’s also passionate about mushrooms, fairies, and, well, you just have to meet him.

“Wol has a lot of personal knowledge about his own life, and he can talk to you about the forest through his own experience,” explained Liquid City Director Keiichi Matsuda. “Ultimately, Wol has a mind of its own and we can only provide parameters for it.”

Wol

I met Wol through the Quest Pro in passthrough AR via a portal that appeared in the room directly into the Redwoods – and, now that I think about it, this was the day before Niantic announced that 8th Wall supported Quest Pro MR. In any case, the whole experience was magical, and I can’t wait to get home and show it to the family.

Visiting Orlando via Santa Clara

Largely thanks to a group called the Orlando Economic Partnership, Orlando is quickly becoming a global epicenter of metaverse development. Just one of their many initiatives is an 800-square-mile virtual twin of the Orlando area. The digital twin has its own in-person viewing room in Orlando but it also exists in a more bite-size iteration that runs on a Quest 2.

“The idea was to showcase the entire region – all of its assets in terms of data points that we could present,” explained the OEP’s Director of Marketing and Communications Justin Braun. “It’s going to become a platform for the city to build on.”

I was able to see at AWE featured photorealistic 3D models of Orlando landmarks, complete with informational slides and quiz questions. The full version, which took 11 months, is a lot more fully featured. It just doesn’t fit in Braun’s backpack.

“At some point, this will be able to do things that are beneficial for the city and its utilities, like shower power outages,” said the OEP’s Chief Information Officer David Adelson. “It’s community-driven.”

Gathering Around the Campfire

I opened by saying that demos can’t be done remotely. I remotely demoed Campfire recently, but that was their desktop view. Campfire also offers tabletop and room-scale 3D interactions that require the company’s custom-made headset and markers. I got to try these solutions out hands-on when I reconnected with CEO and co-founder Jay Wright on the AWE floor.

campfire at AWE 2023 Day 2 — *Campfire at AWE USA 2023*

“The perception system is designed to do one thing very well, and that’s to make multi-user AR as high-fidelity as desktop,” said Wright. And they’ve done it.

Models and mockups that I viewed in mixed reality using Campfire’s hardware were beautifully rendered. The internet connectivity at AWE is notoriously spotty and, while the controller disconnected a few times, the display never skipped a beat.

Wright demonstrated the visor that switches Campfire from MR to VR on a virtually reconstructed art museum that I could view from above in a “dollhouse mode” or travel through in a 1:1 model. In addition to showcasing more hardware and software ease-of-use, it might have been the most graphically impressive showcase I’ve seen from XR hardware ever.

The Lenovo VRX

With Lenovo ThinkReality’s new headset announced the day before AWE started, this might be the record for the shortest passage of time between a headset releasing and my putting it on – and it’s all thanks to ARPost’s longtime Lenovo contact Bill Adams.

“We think we have one of the best passthrough headsets and most comfortable headsets in the industry,” said Adams, who made a gentleman’s wager that I would (finally) be able to see my notes through the Lenovo VRX.

I couldn’t read my writing, but I could tell where the writing was on the page – which, honestly, is enough. Having tried the same experiment on the Quest Pro earlier that day, I can back up what Adams said about the headset’s passthrough quality.

As for comfort, ditto. The headset features a removable overhead strap, but it was so comfortable that I forgot that the strap was there anyway. Switching from VR to passthrough is a simple button press.

Catching Up With Snap

The average user can have a great AR experience with just a phone, and the average creator can make a really advanced experience without creating their own app, according to Snap Senior Product Communications Manager Cassie Bumgarner.

Snap AR at AWE 2023 — *Snap at AWE 2023*

“There’s a lot of chatter on the hardware front, but what we want to show is that there’s so much more left to unlock on the mobile front,” said Bumgarner.

A Snap Lense made with QReal uses AI to identify LEGO bricks in a tub. A quick scan, and the lens recommends small models that can be made with the available pieces. Bumgarner and I still get the fun of digging out the pieces and assembling them, and then the app creates a virtual LEGO set to match our creation – in this case, a bathtub to go with the duck we made.

Snap bricks AWE 2023 Day 2

Of course, Snap has hardware too. On display at AWE, the company showed off the virtual try-on mirrors debuted at the Snap Partner Summit that took place in April.

One More Day of AWE

Two days down and there’s still so much to look forward to from AWE. The expo floor is still open tomorrow. There are no more keynotes, but that just means that there’s more time for panel discussions and insightful conversations. And don’t think we forgot about the Auggies. While most of the Auggies were awarded last evening, there are still three to be awarded.

AWE USA 2023 Day Two: More Keynotes, More Panels, and the Open Expo Floor Read More »

AWE USA 2023 Day One: XR, AI, Metaverse, and More

AI, AR/VR events, augmented reality, digilens, Events, extended reality, featured, Lenovo, metaverse, nreal, qualcomm, webXR / Ryan Harris / June 2, 2023

AWE USA 2023 saw a blossoming industry defending itself from negative press and a perceived rivalry with other emerging technologies. Fortunately, Day One also brought big announcements, great discussions, and a little help from AI itself.

Ori Inbar’s Welcome Address

Historically, AWE has started with an address from founder Ori Inbar. This time, it started with an address from a hologram of Ori Inbar appearing on an ARHT display.

Ori Inbar hologram at AWE USA 2023 Day 1 — *Ori Inbar hologram*

The hologram waxed on for a few minutes about progress in the industry and XR’s incredible journey. Then the human Ori Inbar appeared and told the audience that everything that the hologram said was written by ChatGPT.

While (the real) Inbar quipped that he uses artificial intelligence to show him how not to talk, he addressed recent media claims that AI is taking attention and funding away from XR. He has a different view.

it’s ON !!!

Ori Inbar just started his opening key note at #AWE2023

Holo-Ori was here thanks to our friends from @arht_tech.@como pic.twitter.com/Do23hjIkST

— AWE (@ARealityEvent) May 31, 2023

“We industry insiders know this is not exactly true … AI is a good thing for XR. AI accelerates XR,” said Inbar. “XR is the interface for AI … our interactions [with AI] will become a lot less about text and prompts and a lot more about spatial context.”

“Metaverse, Shmetaverse” Returns With a Very Special Guest

Inbar has always been bullish on XR. He has been skeptical of the metaverse.

At the end of his welcome address last year, Inbar praised himself for not saying “the M word” a single time. The year before that, he opened the conference with a joke game show called “Metaverse, Shmetaverse.” Attendees this year were curious to see Inbar share the stage with a special guest: Neal Stephenson.

Neal Stephenson at AWE USA 2023 Day 1 — *Neal Stephenson*

Stephenson’s 1992 book, Snow Crash, introduced the world to the word “metaverse” – though Stephenson said that he wasn’t the first one to imagine the concept. He also addressed the common concern that the term for shared virtual spaces came from a dystopian novel.

“The metaverse described in Snow Crash was my best guess about what spatial computing as a mass medium might look like,” said Stephenson. “The metaverse itself is neither dystopian nor utopian.”

Stephenson then commented that the last five years or so have seen the emergence of the core technologies necessary to create the metaverse, though it still suffers from a lack of compelling content. That’s something that his company, Lamina1, hopes to address through a blockchain-based system for rewarding creators.

“There have to be experiences in the metaverse that are worth having,” said Stephenson. “For me, there’s a kind of glaring and frustrating lack of support for the people who make those experiences.”

AWE 2023 Keynotes and Follow-Ups

Both Day One and Day Two of AWE start out with blocks of keynotes on the main stage. On Day One, following Inbar’s welcome address and conversation with Stephenson, we heard from Qualcomm and XREAL (formerly Nreal). Both talks kicked off themes that would be taken up in other sessions throughout the day.

Qualcomm

From the main stage, Qualcomm Vice President and General Manager of XR, Hugo Swart, presented “Accelerating the XR Ecosystem: The Future Is Open.” He commented on the challenge of developing AR headsets, but mentioned the half-dozen or so Qualcomm-enabled headsets released in the last year, including the Lenovo ThinkReality VRX announced Tuesday.

Swart was joined on the stage by OPPO Director of XR Technology, Yi Xu, who announced a new Qualcomm-powered MR headset that would become available as a developer edition in the second half of this year.

As exciting as those announcements were, it was a software announcement that really made a stir. It’s a new Snapdragon Spaces tool called “Dual Render Fusion.”

“We have been working very hard to reimagine smartphone XR when used with AR glasses,” said Swart. “The idea is that mobile developers designing apps for 2D expand those apps to world-scale apps without any knowledge of XR.”

Keeping the Conversation Going

Another talk, “XR’s Inflection Point” presented by Qualcomm Director of Product Management Steve Lukas, provided a deeper dive into Dual Render Fusion. The tool allows an experience to use a mobile phone camera and a headworn device’s camera simultaneously. Existing app development tools hadn’t allowed this because (until now) it didn’t make sense.

Steve Lukas at AWE 2023 Day 1 — *Steve Lukas*

“To increase XR’s adoption curve, we must first flatten its learning curve, and that’s what Qualcomm just did,” said Lukas. “We’re not ready to give up on mobile phones so why don’t we stop talking about how to replace them and start talking about how to leverage them?”

A panel discussion, “Creating a New Reality With Snapdragon Today” moderated by Qualcomm Senior Director of Product Management XR Said Bakadir, brought together Xu, Lenovo General Manager of XR and Metaverse Vishal Shah, and DigiLens Vice President of Sales and Marketing Brian Hamilton. They largely addressed the need to rethink AR content and delivery.

Vishal Shah, Brian Hamilton, Yi Xu, and Said Bakadir at AWE USA 2023 Day 1 — *From left to right: Vishal Shah, Brian Hamilton, Yi Xu, and Said Bakadir*

“When I talk to the developers, they say, ‘Well there’s no hardware.’ When I talk to the hardware guys, they say, ‘There’s no content.’ And we’re kind of stuck in that space,” said Bakadir.

Hamilton and Shah both said, in their own words, that Qualcomm is creating “an all-in-one platform” and “an end-to-end solution” that solves the content/delivery dilemma that Bakadir opened with.

XREAL

In case you blinked and missed it, Nreal is now XREAL. According to a release shared with ARPost, the name change had to do with “disputes regarding the Nreal mark” (probably how similar it was to “Unreal”). But, “the disputes were solved amicably.”

The only change is the name – the hardware and software are still the hardware and software that we know and love. So, when CEO Chi Xu took the stage to present “Unleashing the Potential of Consumer AR” he just focused on progress.

From one angle, that progress looks like a version of XREAL’s AR operating system for Steam Deck, which Xu said is “coming soon.” From another angle, it looked like the partnership with Sightful which recently resulted in “Spacetop” – the world’s first AR laptop.

XREAL also announced Beam, a controller and compute box that can connect wirelessly or via hard connection to XREAL glasses specifically for streaming media. Beam also allows comfort and usability settings for the virtual screen that aren’t currently supported by the company’s current console and app integrations. Xu called it “the best TV innovation since TV.”

AI and XR

A number of panels and talks also picked up on Inbar’s theme of AI and XR. And they all (as far as I saw) unanimously agreed with Inbar’s assessment that there is no actual competition between the two technologies.

The most in-depth discussion on the topic was “The Intersection of AI and XR” a panel discussion between XR ethicist Kent Bye, Lamina1 CPO Tony Parisi, HTC Global VP of Corporate Development Alvin Graylin, and moderated by WXR Fund Managing Partner Amy LaMeyer.

Amy LaMeyer, Tony Parisi, Alvin Graylin, Kent Bye AWE 2023 Day 1 — *From left to right: Amy LaMeyer, Tony Parisi, Alvin Graylin, Kent Bye*

“There’s this myth that AI is here so now XR’s dead, but it’s the complete opposite,” said Graylin. Graylin pointed out that most forms of tracking and input as well as approaches to scene understanding are all driven by AI. “AI has been part of XR for a long time.”

While they all agreed that AI is a part of XR, the group disagreed on the extent to which AI could take over content creation.

“A lot of people think AI is the solution to all of their content creation and authoring needs in XR, but that’s not the whole equation,” said Parisi.

Graylin countered that AI will increasingly be able to replace human developers. Bye in particular was vocal that we should be reluctant and suspicious of handing over too much creative power to AI in the first place.

“The differentiating factor is going to be storytelling,” said Bye. “I’m seeing a lot of XR theater that has live actors doing things that AI could never do.”

Web3, WebXR, and the Metaverse

The conversation is still continuing regarding the relationship between the metaverse and Web3. With both the metaverse and Web3 focusing on the ideas of openness and interoperability, WebXR has become a common ground between the two. WebXR is also the most accessible from a hardware perspective.

“VR headsets will remain a niche tech like game consoles: some people will have them and use them and swear by them and won’t be able to live without them, but not everyone will have one,” Nokia Head of Trends and Innovation Scouting, Leslie Shannon, said in her talk “What Problem Does the Metaverse Solve?”

Leslie Shannon AWE 2023 Day 1 — *Leslie Shannon*

“The majority of metaverse experiences are happening on mobile phones,” said Shannon. “Presence is more important than immersion.”

Wonderland Engine CEO Jonathan Hale asked “Will WebXR Replace Native XR” with The Fitness Resort COO Lydia Berry. Berry commented that the availability of WebXR across devices helps developers make their content accessible as well as discoverable.

Lydia Berry and Jonathan Hale AWE 2023 Day 1 — *Lydia Berry and Jonathan Hale*

“The adoption challenges around glasses are there. We’re still in the really early adoption phase,” said Berry. “We need as many headsets out there as possible.”

Hale also added that WebXR is being taken more seriously as a delivery method by hardware manufacturers who were previously mainly interested in pursuing native apps.

“More and more interest is coming from hardware manufacturers every day,” said Hale. “We just announced that we’re working with Qualcomm to bring Wonderland Engine to Snapdragon Spaces.”

Keep Coming Back

AWE Day One was a riot but there’s a lot more where that came from. Day Two kicks off with keynotes by Magic Leap and Niantic, there are more talks, more panels, more AI, and the Expo Floor opens up for demos. We’ll see you tomorrow.

AWE USA 2023 Day One: XR, AI, Metaverse, and More Read More »

DigiLens Expands Ecosystem With Hardware, Software Announcements

AR glasses, augmented reality, AWE, digilens, featured, News, optics, qualcomm / Ryan Harris / June 1, 2023

DigiLens may not be on every XR user’s mind, but we all owe them a lot. The optical components manufacturer only recently released its first branded wearable, but the organization makes parts for a number of XR companies and products. That’s why it’s so exciting that the company announced a wave of new processes and partnerships over the last few weeks.

SRG+

“Surface Relief Gratings” is one complicated process within the production of the complicated system that is a waveguide – the optical component that put DigiLens on the map. The short of it is that waveguides are the translucent screen on which a feed is cast by an accompanying “light engine” in this particular approach to AR displays.

DigiLens doesn’t make light engines, but the methods that they use to produce lenses can reduce “eye glow” – which is essentially wasted light. The company’s new “SRG+” waveguide process achieves these ends at a lower cost, while also increasing the aspect ratio for an improved field of view on a lighter lens that can be produced more efficiently at a larger scale.

DigiLens announces SRG+

Lens benefits aside, this process improvement also allows for a more efficient light engine. A more efficient light engine translates to less energy consumption and a smaller form factor for the complete device. All of those are good selling points for a head-worn display. Many of those benefits are also true for Micro OLED lenses, a different approach to AR displays.

“I am excited about Digilens’ recent SRG+ developments, which provide a new, low-cost replication technology satisfying such drastic nanostructure requirements,” Dr. Bernard Kress, President of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, said in a release. “The AR waveguides field is the tip of the iceberg.”

A New Partner in Mojo Vision

The first major partner to take advantage of this new process is Mojo Vision, a Micro-LED manufacturer that became famous in the industry for pursuing AR contact lenses. While that product has yet to materialize, its pursuit has resulted in Mojo Vision holding records for large displays on small tech. And, it can get even larger and lighter thanks to SRG+.

“Bringing our technologies together will raise the bar on display performance, and efficiency in the AR/XR industry,” Mojo Vision CEO Nikhil Balram said in a release shared with ARPost. “Partnering with DigiLens brings AR glasses closer to mass-scale consumer electronics.”

This partnership may also help to solve another one of AR’s persistent challenges: the sunny problem. AR glasses to date are almost always tinted. That’s because, to see AR elements in high ambient light conditions, the display either needs to be exceptionally bright or artificially darkened. Instead of cranking up the brightness, manufacturers opt for tinted lenses.

“The total form factor of the AR glasses can finally be small and light enough for consumers to wear for long periods of time and bright enough to allow them to see the superimposed digital information — even on a sunny day — without needing to darken the lenses,” DigiLens CEO Chris Pickett said in the release.

ARGO Is DigiLens’ Golden Fleece

After years of working backstage for device manufacturers, DigiLens announced ARGO at the beginning of this year, calling it “the first purpose-built stand-alone AR/XR device designed for enterprise and industrial-lite workers.” The glasses use the company’s in-house waveguides and a custom-built Android-based operating system running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 chip.

DigiLens ARGO glasses

“This is a big milestone for DigiLens at a very high level. We have always been a component manufacturer,” DigiLens VP and GM of Product, Nima Shams told ARPost at the time. “At the same time, we want to push the market and meet the market and it seems like the market is kind of open and waiting.”

More Opportunities With Qualcomm

Close followers of Qualcomm’s XR operations may recall that the company often saves major news around its XR developer platform Snapdragon Spaces for AWE. The platform launched at AWE in 2021 and became available to the public at AWE last year. This year, among other announcements, Qualcomm announced Spaces compatibility with ARGO.

“We are excited to support the democratization of the XR industry by offering Snapdragon Spaces through DigiLens’ leading all-in-one AR headset,” Qualcomm Senior Director of Product Management XR, Said Bakadir, said in a release shared with ARPost.

“DigiLens’ high-transparency and sunlight-readable optics combined with the universe of leading XR application developers from Snapdragon Spaces are critical in supporting the needs of the expanding enterprise and industrial markets,” said Bakadir.

Snapdragon Spaces bundles developer tools including hand and position tracking, scene understanding and persistent anchors, spatial mapping, and plane detection. So, while we’re likely to see more partnerships with more existing applications, this strengthened relationship with Qualcomm could mean more native apps on ARGO.

Getting Rugged With Taqtile

“Industrial-lite” might be getting a bit heavier as DigiLens partners with Taqtile on a “rugged AR-enabled solution for industrial and defense customers” – presumably a more durable version of the original ARGO running Manifest, Taqtile’s flagship enterprise AR solution. Taqtile recently released a free version of Manifest to make its capabilities more available to potential clients.

“ARGO represents just the type of head-mounted, hands-free device that Manifest customers have been looking for,” Taqtile CTO John Tomizuka said in a release. “We continue to evaluate hardware solutions that will meet the unique needs of our deskless workers, and the combination of Manifest and ARGO has the ability to deliver performance and functionality.”

Getting Smart With Wisear

Wisear is a neural interface company that uses “smart earphones” to allow users to control connected devices with their thoughts rather than with touch, gesture, or even voice controls.

For the average consumer, that might just be really cool. For consumers with neurological disorders, that might be a new way to connect to the world. For enterprise, it solves another problem.

wisear smart earphones

Headworn devices mean frontline workers aren’t holding the device, but if they need their hands to interact with it, that still means taking their hands off of the job. Voice controls get around this but some environments and circumstances make voice controls inconvenient or difficult to use. Neural inputs solve those problems too. And Wisear is bringing those solutions to ARGO.

“DigiLens and Wisear share a common vision of using cutting-edge technology to revolutionize the way frontline workers work,” Pickett said in a release shared with ARPost. “Our ARGO smart glasses, coupled with Wisear’s neural interface-powered earphones, will provide frontline workers with the tools they need to work seamlessly and safely.”

More Tracking Options With Ultraleap

Ultraleap is another components manufacturer. They make input accessories like tracking cameras, controllers, and haptics. A brief shared with ARPost only mentions “a groundbreaking partnership” between the companies “offering a truly immersive and user-friendly experience across diverse applications, from gaming and education to industrial training and healthcare.”

That sounds a lot like it hints at more wide availability for ARGO, but don’t get your hopes up yet. This is the announcement about which we know the least. Most of this article has come together from releases shared with ARPost in advance of AWE, which is happening now. So, watch our AWE coverage articles as they come out for more concrete information.

So Much More to Come

Announcements from component manufacturers can be tantalizing. We know that they have huge ramifications for the whole industry, but we know that those ramifications aren’t immediate. We’re closely watching DigiLens and its partners to see when some of these announcements might bear tangible fruit but keep in mind that this company also has its own full model out now.

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