We’re just over halfway through 2017, and it’s been a rollercoaster for VR. We’ve seen headsets surpass a million in sales while others have had their prices slashed and new peripherals have been released. But while we’re entering an exciting time to be a VR consumer, we constantly find ourselves asking that one vital question:...
Author: ssvar
Swiss Society of Virtual and Augmented Reality
Using Google Earth VR to Study Awe – Towards a Virtual Overview Effect
One of the unique affordances of virtual reality is its power to convey the vastness of scale, which can invoke feelings of awe. Denise Quesnel is a graduate student at Simon Frasier University’s iSpace Lab, and she has been studying the process of invoking awe using Google Earth VR. She was inspired by Frank White’s work...
Apple AR: Museum of Flight Gives Tours Inside the First Boeing 737
Education opportunity is a big part of what makes Apple’s ARKit so exciting. The Museum of Flight in Seattle is taking full advantage of that with their new platform prototype. The company partnered with digital media company Tosolini Productions to create an immersive virtual tour of the first Boeing 737 plane. The museum has many...
Apple AR: Developer Shows Us the Possible Future of Map Apps
Map apps, while incredibly helpful in our technology-centric world, can often be a source of frustration. No maps app is perfect, and things can get confusing fairly quickly when trying to navigate GPS mapping. iOS developer Andrew Hart has experimented with a new way of mobile mapping using Apple’s ARKit that could make finding your...
Google Glass Rises from the Grave, but is It Undead or Unkillable?
They say that to truly successful, you need the freedom to fail. So it’s no wonder that Google is such a giant success. When you look at the many gigantic flops that the company has produced over the years you can’t help but marvel at audacity some of them have had. Among these few have...
SketchAR Brings AR Art To Microsoft’s HoloLens
When we first saw SketchAR, the app let us use our iPhones to trace over AR images, providing a quick and easy way to get us drawing like professional artists. But we see far more use for the app on a headset, freeing up one hand and letting us trace far more intuitively. Now we...
HoloLens 2.0 to Put a Custom A.I. Chip at the Heart of Its On-board Processor
Microsoft has undoubtedly been working on the next version of HoloLens, the company’s AR headset, but now we know a little more about what’s going into the next iteration: a Microsoft-built custom AI chip designed to carry out low-latency computer vision tasks. Taking the stage yesterday at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference (CVPR) 2017,...
Here’s How Apple’s ARKit Can Revolutionize Map Apps
Are you holding the map right? Do we go left or right? Is this bit that building or that park? Even using GPS-tracked app maps, navigating around busy cities and towns can be somewhat confusing. With this awesome use of Apple’s ARKit, though, getting fast, clear directions has never been easier. iOS developer Andrew Hart...
Hado Kart Is Mario Kart in AR And It Looks Amazing
Mario Kart made an unexpected debut in VR earlier this year for a Japanese arcade and it looks fantastic. We have to admit, though, that this AR karting game looks even better. Hado Kart looks like a real life take on Mario Kart’s classic multiplayer battle mode It sees players put on a Microsoft HoloLens...
10 Oculus Exclusives HTC Vive Owners Should Play Using Revive Hack
Thanks to ReVive, a hack that lets SteamVR-compatible headsets play Oculus Rift exclusives, anyone with an HTC Vive can enjoy a number of unofficially supported games from the Oculus Store. Here we take a look at 5 of the games you shouldn’t miss—of course with the appended “buyer beware” warning that the Revive hack caries with it....