Augmented World Expo (AWE) Highlights The Growth Of The XR Industry
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One aspect of this particular show is that it came a week before Apple is expected to announce its first device that will be part of the XR world's growth in the future. Many vendors at the show offered caveats that included the fact that Apple will very likely become a significant player in the XR world. Still, their company or technology will also be well-positioned to contribute to this industry's growth.
Another defining thing of this year's show is that it is clear that the tech industry has centered on the term XR to define and represent anything related to virtual world technologies. ...
Behind the scene, the XR industry has been growing even though many in the media declared it dead. ...
... Sightful's Spacetop laptop shows a real radical design shift for laptops.
This design has a keyboard and uses Xreal's XR glasses to deliver the equivalent of a 100-inch screen. I got to test it, and it is an impressive product. When you put on the Xreal glasses, you see apps optimized for this device on this (virtual) huge screen. ...
AWE has become the industry's top XR show and is now a significant event that anyone interested in XR needs to follow and attend, if possible. Next year AWE moves to Long Beach, CA and will be held from June 18-20, 2024.
See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2023/06/02/augmented-world-expo-awe-highlights-the-growth-of-the-xr-industry/?sh=554475c85d87
Niantic announces major updates to its augmented reality platforms for developers
... ARDK allows developers to build immersive and imaginative AR applications that use cameras on mobile devices and headsets to change what users can see. Augmented reality blends what’s visible, through the camera, with additional added computer graphics overlaid on it that tracks and follows the movement of the user as if it’s part of the world and can interact with the user’s gestures and actions.
With Lightship ARDK 3.0, Unity developers will be able to add Niantic’s AR features onto Unity’s own AR Foundation extended reality developer library. AR Foundation is an AR engine that includes core features from across the augmented reality ecosystem such as device tracking, plane tracking, point clouds, anchors and similar. With the addition of ARDK’s capabilities, Lightship developers will be able to add Niantic’s own semantic segmentation, occlusion, meshing, mapping and other features. ...
To celebrate this, Niantic released its first mixed reality experience powered by 8th Wall recently called “Wol,” an artificial intelligence-enabled owl that transforms a space into a redwood forest and will then talk to the user. ...
See the full story here: https://siliconangle.com/2023/06/01/niantic-announces-major-updates-augmented-reality-platforms-developers/
Zuckerberg unveils Meta Quest 3 VR headset days before Apple reveals its own
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It appears to have at least three cameras on the front that may improve some of the pass-through experiences, where a user can see the real world around them while wearing the headset and interacting with apps. The video noted that it had improved “natural” depth perception for the wearer, and touted graphics improvements for gaming.
“High-fidelity color Passthrough, innovative machine learning, and spatial understanding let you interact with virtual content and the physical world simultaneously, creating limitless possibilities to explore,” Meta said in a release. ...
See the full story here; https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/meta-quest-3-unveiled-ahead-of-apples-planned-vr-headset-debut.html
Anxious Consumers Unlikely to Cut Leading Entertainment Subscriptions
From https://www.degonline.org/musicwatch-consumers-not-cut-leading-entertainment-subscriptions/
When Digital Technologies Enhance Craftsmanship: How to Build a Domed Pavilion with Augmented Reality
Can current design and manufacturing technologies be incorporated into vernacular and traditional construction techniques? On the IE University campus in Segovia, a group of researchers from IE University, Princeton University, and the University of Bergamo built an unreinforced masonry structure called innixAR that demonstrates how digital technologies can enhance craftsmanship. This pavilion explores the intersection between the latest augmented reality (AR) innovations and 4D funicular design to allow vault craftsmen to build masonry structures without the need for physical guides and costly temporary molds.
The project led by the architect Wesam Al Asali and Sigrid Adriaenssens is composed of three curved vaults that use fixed wooden ribs for support. The construction uses the technique of Guastavino tile, which uses quick-setting plaster and lightweight terracotta pieces to create thin compression structures.
The form was created using an innovative 4D funicular design method developed at Princeton University. This method uses a sequence of assembly and restricted form-finding to generate compression-only structures. In this case, inspired by the study of vernacular vault construction. Here, they worked closely with Salvador Gomis Aviñó, an expert in vault construction from Valencia with 20 years of experience in his trade.
Guided by holograms superimposed on their field of view through an Augmented Reality viewer, the builder was able to create a complex masonry structure without the need for molds, guides, and formwork that consume time and materials. ...
InnixAR is the result of a three-year-long collaboration between IE University's School of Architectureand Design and Princeton University's Form Finding Laboratory, and has been supported by the Teaching Initiative Fund of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. ...
See the full story here: https://www.archdaily.com/1001450/when-digital-technologies-enhance-craftsmanship-how-to-build-a-domed-pavilion-with-augmented-reality
