Latest news with #mixedReality
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Meta Quest 3 VR and Batman Bundle at This Price? Don't Wait for Prime Day
The Meta Quest 3 is the most feature-rich affordable VR headset available currently, and it's an easy top choice among users and critics alike. While the new 3S model is cheaper at $299, it simply doesn't offer the same level of performance and features as the standard Meta Quest 3. With a perfect 5 out of 5-star rating from over 2,000 Amazon reviews, this headset is our pick for best immersive gaming and mixed reality. What's great is that the Meta Quest 3 doesn't require a console at all, so you can just use it right out of the box. Right now, the Meta Quest 3 512GB is available at a price of $499, and this is a rare chance to get it with some great extras. With your purchase, you'll receive Batman: Arkham Shadow and a three-month trial of Meta Horizon+ at no additional cost. This headset never goes on sale and it's often out of stock due to its popularity (over 10,000 units have been sold in the last 30 days alone). See at Amazon If you're looking for the ultimate mixed reality experience, this headset is for you. It features the Infinite Display with the widest and most immersive field of view of any Quest headset. It comes with a 2064×2208 resolution display for each eye, and delivers realistic graphics that bring every virtual world to life. The 4K resolution delivers stunning detail and vivid color. Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 platform, the graphical performance is twice as powerful as the previous generation so even the most graphically demanding games are smooth and look incredible. With 512GB of storage, you have room for a huge library of games, apps, and media so you'll never have to worry about running out of room. Thin, wireless design is crafted for top-notch comfort, weight-balancing to sit evenly so you can play. You can use your hands to scroll through menus and input on a virtual keyboard or grab the Touch Plus controllers for responsive control and realistic feedback. The headset is designed for safety and sharing too: You can add multiple users, set up parental controls, track daily usage, and assign permissions to the entire family. With the three-month trial of Meta Horizon+ included, you have instant access to a rotating library of games and monthly drops which makes it easy to discover new favorites and keep your experience fresh. If you're looking for the best in VR, don't miss this early Prime Day deal. See at Amazon
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Vuzix (VUZI) -Sphere Alliance Brings AI-Enhanced AR to the Frontline
Vuzix Corporation (NASDAQ:VUZI) is one of the 12 best-augmented reality stocks to buy, according to analysts. On June 24, Vuzix Corporation partnered with Sphere Technology Holdings to bring Sphere's mixed reality and AI-powered platform to its M400 and M4000 AR smart glasses. This partnership is set to equip frontline workers with hands-free, immersive digital tools to streamline workflows and enable real-time decision-making in complex environments. SFIO CRACHO/ Sphere's spatial computing platform blends the digital and physical worlds using features like spatial mapping, gesture recognition, and holographic rendering. It integrates with enterprise systems such as ERP and IoT platforms, making it ideal for industries that require precision and collaboration without disrupting workflows. By combining Sphere's immersive technology with the portability of Vuzix smart glasses, the collaboration targets key sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, and defense. Executives from both firms emphasize the potential to boost operational efficiency, enhance safety, and improve productivity—even in the most demanding field conditions. Vuzix Corporation (NASDAQ:VUZI) designs, manufactures, and markets augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) display devices and smart glasses. It focuses on creating wearable display technology for various applications, including enterprise, defense, and consumer markets. While we acknowledge the potential of VUZI as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 11 Best Performing Warren Buffett Stocks in 2025 and 12 Best Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Stocks to Buy. Disclosure: None.
GSM Arena
11-06-2025
- GSM Arena
Samsung showcases a VR headset screen with 20,000 nits brightness along with other display tech
As Samsung is preparing to launch its first mixed-reality headset, dubbed Project Moohan, the Korean tech giant showcased a cutting-edge OLEDoS panel for such headsets, capable of reaching 20,000 nits of brightness. OLEDoS panels are the same as standard OLED screens, but instead of using a glass or plastic substrate for the backplane, they use silicon, which allows higher brightness, resolution and pixel density. It's mostly used on small screens, and Samsung paired it with a Micro Lens Array to enhance brightness and viewing angles further. However, we don't know if Samsung will use that 1.3-inch panel for its XR headset, but it might end up using its flagship OLEDoS panel with 5,000 ppi and 15,000 nits peak brightness, and 120Hz variable refresh rate. It was showcased last month. During the Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2025 in the US, the company revealed several other cutting-edge displays - White OLEDoS panel, two QD-OLED gaming monitors, a Flexible Gaming OLED, a 12.4-inch rollable and foldable panel, a multi-foldable OLED and a micro-LED stretchable display. Source
CNET
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
Meow Wolf's Weird Physical Universe Is Planning to Extend Into Augmented Reality
I've spent years exploring immersive physical and digital spaces and dreaming of how they can overlap. A new partnership is finally making my dream come true. Immersive installation creator Meow Wolf and Pokemon Go creator Niantic Spatial will join forces to expand and extend existing Meow Wolf spaces into a mixed reality game. It will live on your phone, activate and change your physical experience in immersive exhibits, and could even follow you home. The partnership is starting this year with a closed beta test of the world-mapped AR overlays in Meow Wolf's Denver space, Convergence Station. The location-based technology is also designed to bleed outside the physical exhibit and appear on phones. It may even show up on future AR glasses, starting with plans for 2026. "The belief here is that the Meow Wolf universe really could extend both physically and digitally across the entire globe," Vince Kadlubek, Meow Wolf co-founder and chief vision officer told me. Our exclusive conversation included Meow Wolf CTO John Lee and the heads of Niantic Spatial's team. I'm imagining some sort of bizarre Pokemon Go-like series of interdimensional quests that start in the exhibits and continue when you're home, and that's not far off from what's being planned. The partnership could make Meow Wolf's sensory-overload experiences feel even more fascinating, but it also indicates where other immersive physical spaces and theme parks could be heading soon. Meow Wolf dabbled in VR a few years ago, recreating one of its Denver installations in Walkabout Mini Golf. The new partnership with Ninatic aims to directly layer virtual elements into physical exhibits via your phone. Mighty Coconut Physical spaces get augmented reality layers Meow Wolf, a Santa Fe-based collective, has already created five different immersive interactive installations around the US and has plans for two more in the next several years. It's a company I became recently obsessed with because it's already been heavily dabbling in the physical-digital, real-virtual blend. All their experiences are created to feel like they're tapping into interdimensional portals, while their actual exhibits are made out of largely physical materials by hundreds of artists. Now Playing: Meow Wolf and Interactive Experiences - Tech Therapy 06:55 Extending into virtual and augmented reality is a goal Meow Wolf has had for years. The company made a virtual version of its Denver exhibit inside a VR mini golf game in 2023, and played around with AR in its apps back in 2019. The folks from Niantic and Meow Wolf told me that the current move is different. It's actually aiming to layer the real-world exhibits with AR that'll be mapped onto the physical spaces, using visual positioning tools Niantic Spatial started building in games like Pokemon Go. And it's going to work with physical things in the exhibits. "We've been doing a lot of work with what we call mechanical connectivity, so that things that you do in the app can affect the actual physical exhibition via local state changes or big takeovers, and vice versa," Meow Wolf CTO Lee said. When I spoke to Meow Wolf earlier this year, I learned that that the planned New York installation will explore mixed reality in all new ways. This looks like a big part of those plans. "We are in a unique position -- because we have these indoor environments, we are able to build this show system infrastructure that is quite sophisticated," said Kadlubek. Peridot, a mixed-reality pet made by Niantic Spatial, shows some hints of where Meow Wolf's collaboration could be heading. Screenshot by Scott Stein/CNET A field test for the overlap of real and AR The closed beta test later this year will change the way entering and moving through Meow Wolf's Denver location will feel. It'll start with an AR mission outside involving an outdoor portal, leading to quests inside the Meow Wolf space. Maps with portal locations could start appearing in Meow Wolf's app with AR quests. Meow Wolf and Niantic Spatial "What you did outside of the exhibition matters now to what you're doing inside of the exhibition, and the quest continues as you find additional clues and solve additional puzzles inside the exhibition, " explained Kadlubek. "You then have a reward of the exhibition itself physically responding to you completing that quest, being able to recognize who you are and what you've done, and responding with light and sound projection specifically for you. After you leave the exhibition more AR points on a map show up. The proof of concept stops there, but you can start to understand how important that piece is to scaling to other cities, and then eventually scaling globally." After the beta, a public version of the overlaid AR experience could arrive at either Meow Wolf's Denver or upcoming LA locations, according to Kadlubek. Balancing virtual distractions with real experiences The blending of the virtual and the physical is a difficult territory, one promised by AR companies for years. Companies like Niantic Spatial and Snap have built tools and apps that add AR onto physical landmarks or scans of real-world mapped areas. Niantic Spatial used to have a number of AR-enabled games, but sold off most of its gaming properties to Scopely and is now focused on spatial technologies with real-world mapping. Recent projects like Peridot, a whimsical augmented reality pet that looks like it's running around your home, show off how some of the technology could work. The Meow Wolf partnership sounds almost like Pokemon Go, but it'll work both at exhibits and away from them. Kadlubek suggests that the ideal mix is about 20% AR at physical locations and 80% real, and 80% AR when using the app anywhere else. "It's been a long time coming to get the technology to a place where the experience is realistic enough and feels precise enough. And you know, our huge focus is on this idea of connecting bits to atoms, really bringing immersive digital content onto the canvas of the 3D world," said Thomas Gewecke, Niantic Spatial's president and COO. "We think the time has come for this sort of capability." Kadlubek and Lee acknowledge that they don't want these new AR experiences to overwhelm or distract from the physical installations themselves, which are already a celebration of sensory overload. But the AR and mapping additions to Meow Wolf's app could help add quests and deeper layers of substory. Tapping into one of Meow Wolf's terminals at its Las Vegas exhibit. Little RFID cards serve as souvenirs and a sort of interactive game layer. Future layers of augmented-reality interaction with the physical space could do even more. Scott Stein/CNET Where will the real and virtual overlaps blend and bleed here and everywhere else? Meow Wolf's exhibits already have layers of games and secrets, triggered by in-world interactive objects like phones, or by tapping NFC-triggered cards to terminals. Universal's Super Nintendo World and Wizarding World have quests and challenges that get triggered by bands and wands that tap or wave in certain places at the right time. Watch this: What I Unlocked in Epic Universe With Nintendo Power-Up Bands and Harry Potter Wands 08:00 These extra pieces all need to lean on more evolved phone apps, a thing that not everyone visiting a theme park or an art exhibit wants to start pulling out of their pockets. With Disney and Universal, phone apps have become overloaded. Meow Wolf's evolving phone app, which I tried in the Santa Fe and Denver exhibits this spring, is more mysterious -- and it's already overlapping with the physical places. Turning on a "psychic sensor" lets the app scan for Bluetooth beacons in the rooms you walk through. After your visit, you can open it up and see secrets you've unlocked: artifacts you may have missed, videos, bits of lore. Meow Wolf's Kadlubek and Lee say the Niantic Spatial tech infusions will keep evolving that app's creative overlaps in new ways, and add an ARG-like series of game quests that will keep following you. They could even be used, potentially, to connect to pop-up experiences, other partner art exhibits or to trigger or organize performances. The ideas remind me of the potential I saw when Niantic first announced its Lightship world-mapped developer platform years ago, and a collaboration with immersive theater company Punchdrunk that was canceled before anything was created. I've seen promises of these types of overlaps and connections come and go. Are they actually starting to happen? This time, however, the overlays could be coming in all sorts of ways. Meow Wolf's exhibits are going to be built for this tech integration going forward, said Lee. Existing exhibits are being retro-fitted and enhanced -- with the exception of the original, less tech-infused House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe. I already got lost in Meow Wolf's mazes of dripping art, losing myself in other worlds. The collective's weird merchandise sits on my shelves, like escaped pieces of my journey. But maybe I'll be living in Meow Wolf's world all the time in the future. Is that where all our theme parks are heading, too?
TechCrunch
09-06-2025
- TechCrunch
From spatial widgets to realistic Personas: All the visionOS updates Apple announced at WWDC
Apple's updates to visionOS 26, the operating system powering its mixed reality headset, build on last year's Apple Vision Pro spatial computer that blends digital content with the physical world. At WWDC, Apple announced a range of updates for both consumer and enterprise customers, from new spatial widgets and content to more realistic Personas and more. Personalized spatial widgets All widgets — including Calendar, shown here — are customizable, with a variety of options for frame width, color, and depth. Image Credits:Apple Apple's widgets offer personalized and useful information at a glance. With visionOS 26, they become spatial, integrating into your space. You can customize the widgets to the size, color, and depth you like, and place them where you want. New widgets include a clock that you can decorate, weather that adapts to the weather outside near you, music for quick access to tunes, and photos that can transform into a panorama or a 'window to another space.' Adding depth to 2D images Image Credits:Apple An update to the visionOS Photos app uses a new AI algorithm that leverages computational depth to create multiple perspectives for your 2D photos, bringing images to life. Apple says it will feel like you can 'lean right into them and look around.' Spatial browsing on Safari can also make web browsing a more immersive experience. With certain supported articles, spatial browsing can hide distractions and reveal inline photos that 'come alive as you scroll.' Developers can also add spatial browsing to their own apps. Talking heads With VisionOS 26, Personas are transformed to feel more natural and familiar. Image Credits:Apple Apple released Personas, an AI avatar to represent you on video calls, on the Vision Pro as a beta feature last year. With visionOS 26, Apple says Personas 'more realistically represent you.' The new Personas take advantage of 'volumetric rendering and machine learning technology' to enhance everything from how you look in full side profile view to delivering more accurate-looking hair, eyelashes, and complexion. Personas are all created on-device in a 'matter of seconds,' Apple says. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW Immerse together Image Credits:Apple VisionOS 26 lets you and another headset-wearing friend watch a movie or play a spatial game together. This capability is also being marketed for enterprise clients, allowing users to collaborate. For example, 3D design software company Dassault Systèmes is leveraging the ability with its 3DLive app to visualize 3D designs in person and with remote colleagues. Logitech Muse is a spatial accessory that will enable precise input and new ways to interact with collaboration apps like Spatial Analogue. Image Credits:Apple VisionOS 26 also lets organizations easily share a common pool of devices among team members, and even securely saves your eye and hand data, vision prescription, and accessibility settings to your iPhone so users can quickly use a shared team device or a friend's Vision Pro as a guest user. Apple said it would add more APIs so enterprises can create apps designed for visionOS. There's a new 'for your eyes only' mode that ensures only those who have been given access can see any confidential materials. Finally, Apple announced Logitech Muse built for Vision Pro, a spatial accessory built for the headset that lets you draw and collaborate in 3D with precision. More Apple Intelligence features are coming to the Apple Vision Pro. VisionOS 26 supports new languages like French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish, along with support for English in Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, and the U.K. Users can also now 'look to scroll' using just their eyes to explore apps and websites. They can also now unlock their iPhone while wearing the Apple Vision Pro, even when wearing the headset, and visionOS supports relaying calls from iPhone so you can accept a call from the Apple Vision Pro.
