Apple and Snap Pick Up Where Pokemon Go Left Off
Advances in technology are laying the foundation for augmented reality to disrupt markets beyond gaming to social media and commerce.
Several industry leaders are making large bets on the technology, including building dedicated AR headsets. Last month, Snap unveiled its latest Spectacles prototype and bought AR display component supplier WaveOptics for more than $500 million. Facebook Inc. has more than 6,000 employees working on its virtual-reality and augmented-reality projects. And Apple Inc. is said to be developing a virtual-reality headset with some AR functionality for a possible release in 2022.
On the back of its ownership of the widely-used Unreal programming engine, Epic has unique insight into budding trends in the gaming industry. So it was telling when Apple’s counsel cited an internal board presentation in which the Fortnite maker indicated the need to act quickly before AR took off and further entrenched the App Store’s high fee structure. The fact that Epic then sued the world’s most powerful company speaks to how seriously Epic is taking AR’s imminent rise.
Pokemon Go was based on rudimentary AR with basic, cartoon-like overlays. Imagine what’s possible with newer technologies. E-commerce software company Shopify Inc. said last September that product pages with AR experiences led to a 94% higher conversion rate compared to traditional listings. I expect businesses will figure out more effective ways to reach customers as they get accustomed to the latest tools.
See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-09/apple-snap-take-augmented-reality-to-next-level-after-pokemon-go
Tech Companies Want to Make Holograms Part of Routine Office Life
WeWork last month announced a partnership with ARHT Media Inc., a hologram technology company, to bring holograms to 100 WeWork buildings in 16 locations around the world. The effort begins this month with New York, Los Angeles and Miami.
Three-dimensional representations improve on traditional phone and video calls because they make it easier to read body language and feel more personal, backers say.
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-companies-want-to-make-holograms-part-of-routine-office-life-11623232800
Inside the Illuminarium, the $30 million spectacle that’s like walking into a film
A $30 million spectacle is opening in Atlanta next month that proposes a new kind of post-pandemic experience. Blurring elements of film, immersive environments, and theatrical design, the space, called Illuminarium, hopes to bring visitors together indoors in a room that can be transformed through video projection, lidar-based interactive digital elements, sound, and special effects to replicate any place in the world—or beyond.
Created by Alan Greenberg, a private school entrepreneur and former publisher of Esquire Magazine; Jon Kamen, the founder of the documentary and filmmaking company Radical Media; and David Rockwell, the architect, theater designer, and founder of Rockwell Group, Illuminarium is attempting to be a space that is something of a cross between a museum, a movie theater, and virtual reality—with an emphasis on experiencing it together with other people.
Illuminarium’s Atlanta location is planned as its first, with a second now under construction in Las Vegas, another planned in Miami, and joint ventures being set up to expand the concept internationally.
The actual experience of visiting Illuminarium will involve a timed entrance into an 8,000-square-foot room where the walls and floor will be covered in the projected safari film. Broken down into distinct chapters, covering different parts of Africa, the film itself is nonlinear, and able to be entered at any point in its roughly 50-minute run time. Visitors can walk throughout the space or find a place to sit or perch. At their leisure, they can exit through the gift shop.
With haptic effects in the floors that will make visitors feel the rumble of a lion walking nearby and responsive elements in the bar space like a flock of birds that bursts from a tree when visitors approach, the emphasis is on immersion.
“You have a much bigger physical responsibility, because anybody in the room can be looking in any direction at any time. It’s a completely different discipline of filmmaking.”
See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90644148/inside-the-illuminarium-the-30-million-spectacle-thats-like-walking-into-a-film?partner=rss&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss
World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence Immersive Experiences spotlights FluxHouse™ for the Future of Smart Home
Fluxus is part of the World Economic Forum’s Global Innovators community, amongst four leading companies selected to participate in the Forum’s augmented reality pilot project. The World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence Group has introduced the use of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) into its curated content offering for immersive experiences.
"Our digital future is becoming more interactive and spatial, so these first steps into the nascent world of immersive technologies through easily accessible augmented reality represent a paradigm shift towards a new type of user-interface for our interactions with both the physical and digital worlds." - Andrew Berkley, Lead, Immersive Technology and Content, World Economic Forum.
About Fluxus
Founded in 2013 in New York City, Fluxus is a privately held construction technology company, committed to advancing global housing solutions to improve quality of life through a new way of delivering affordable, energy-efficient and healthy homes across the economic spectrum by implementing smart methods of construction, where measurable ESG metrics are woven into the value chain for creating new homes.
See the full story here: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/06/07/2242615/0/en/World-Economic-Forum-s-Strategic-Intelligence-Immersive-Experiences-spotlights-FluxHouse-for-the-Future-of-Smart-Home.html
European Union Plans Framework for Secure Digital Identities
The European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, announced a proposal yesterday to create a European Digital Identity system that would “be available to all EU citizens, residents and businesses in the EU.” The goal is to enable citizens who are interested “to prove their identity and share electronic documents from their European Digital Identity wallets with the click of a button on their phone.” In addition, these citizens would “be able to access online services with their national digital identification,” that would be recognized throughout European Union’s Member States.
“The European digital identity will enable us to do in any Member State as we do at home without any extra cost and fewer hurdles,” stated Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition and EVP for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age. “Be that renting a flat or opening a bank account outside of our home country. And do this in a way that is secure and transparent. So that we will decide how much information we wish to share about ourselves, with whom and for what purpose.”
... the EU’s proposal emphasizes security and privacy: “The new European Digital Identity wallets will enable all Europeans to access services online without having to use private identification methods or unnecessarily sharing personal data. With this solution they will have full control of the data they share.”
However, the proposed European Digital Identity faces a number of hurdles regarding adoption. For example, there is no requirement as of yet for Member States to develop an interoperable Digital Identity wallet; it would certainly require significant effort to drum up awareness and support from individuals, business and platforms; details will likely be necessary to prove how certified wallets would store and protect user data; and web browsers would be required to honor qualified trust certificates for website authentication.
See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/european-union-plans-framework-for-secure-digital-identities/
