Facebook Sets Sights on Augmented Reality – Weekly Mashup 130
April 15, 2016
Facebook Sets Sights on Augmented Reality – Weekly Mashup 130
Mark Zuckerberg Says Augmented Reality Glasses are 'What We're Trying to Get to'
The Verge
"Mark Zuckerberg is optimistic about the future of virtual and augmented reality. At his Facebook F8 conference keynote, Zuckerberg said that the company was working on "a whole new set of social experiences" across VR platforms, echoing an announcement the company made earlier this year. "Virtual reality has the potential to be the most social platform, because you actually feel like you're right there with another person," he said, referencing an Oculus Rift "toybox" demo that lets two people play together in VR. But in the coming decade, Zuckerberg sees a progression that many people have predicted: that virtual reality will merge with augmented reality and become part of everyday life." Read More
Snapchat Augments Reality With 3D Stickers
TechCrunch
"Today Snapchat revealed its new 3D stickers that can be pinned to objects in a video and stick with them no matter how they or your camera move. Add an emoji face to your pet as it walks around, or give the moon sunglasses that grow with it as you zoom in. By bringing augmented reality to the masses, 3D stickers could unlock new creativity. They’re rolling out today on Android and coming soon to iOS. To use them, just record a video, tap the sticker button at the top of the screen, place your sticker over the object you want to stick it to, and long-press on the sticker." Read More
Artificial Intelligence Can Now Design Realistic Video and Game Imagery
MIT Technology Review
"If you close your eyes and imagine a brick wall, you can probably come up with a pretty good mental image. After seeing many such walls, your brain knows what one should look like. A startup in the U.K. is using machine learning to enable computers and smartphones to model visual information in a similar way. A computer could use these visual models for various tasks, from improving video streaming to automatically generating elements of a realistic virtual world." Read More
Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality Investment Hits $1.7 Billion In Last 12 Months
Seeking Alpha
"Digi-Capital's latest quarterly Augmented/Virtual Reality Report and Deals Database analyzed $1.7 billion of AR/VR VC investments in the 12 months to Q1 2016. Almost $1.2 billion was invested in the first quarter of this year alone, with around $800 million going into Magic Leap (Private:MLEAP). To put this in perspective, $1.2 billion dollars is 25x the level of AR/VR investment two years ago in Q2 2014." Read More
"Mark Zuckerberg has revealed Facebook's plans for the next decade - claiming the firm's goal is to 'give everyone the power to share anything with anyone'. Speaking at the firm's F8 developer conference in San Francisco, he predicted the next decade will revolve around video - saying it will have as big an effect as mobile phones. He also predicted the emergence of smart AI bots, and showed off virtual reality glasses indistiguishable from normal glasses he said could be available in a decade." Read More
Research Firm Lowers Projections for Virtual Reality Sales
Wall Street Journal
"Virtual reality may need some more time to catch up to the hype. In a sign early glitches with big new products are causing some to recalibrate expectations, research firm SuperData Research Inc. predicts in a new report that global sales of virtual reality hardware and software will reach $2.86 billion this year, down 22% from its forecast in early March." Read More
