A new report has it that Apple's first virtual reality (VR) headset may be arriving next year, featuring the design close to that of other brands and carrying a price tag of $500.
According to a report Wednesday from Bloomberg, the Apple TV+ streaming service may incorporate augmented reality (AR)-based bonus content ahead of the company's rumored headset in 2022 thought yo be built around augmented and virtual reality (VR).
Having an Apple Watch is convenient for a bevy of reasons, but one of my favorites is having instantaneous access to messages and phone calls from the comfort of my wrist, even when my iPhone isn’t within arm’s reach.
As wonderful as it is, it’s not without its quirks. Perhaps one of the most annoying processes has to do with how you would take Apple Watch-centric phone calls when you have a Bluetooth headset or headphones connected to your iPhone, and a newly released jailbreak tweak called AnswerOnHeadphones by iOS developer CardboardFace aims to fix this once and for all.
Following a November 2017 report from Bloomberg calling for an Apple augmented reality headset featuring a custom OS and chips, a revered analyst thinks it will enter mass production in the fourth quarter of this year ahead of launch in the second quarter of 2020.
Facebook yesterday unveiled a new Oculus GO headset at the F8 conference in California.
Taiwanese handset maker HTC today at CES 2018 unveiled an upgraded edition of its Vive virtual reality headset that Apple recommends for VR content development on macOS.
An extension of Metaio's patent that was assigned to Apple following its acquisition of the company in 2015, Apple's new patent application published Thursday by the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) details potential applications for augmented reality while illustrating a rumored head-mounted display Apple is said to be working on.
Why wait until 2018 or beyond for a rumored Apple headset when you can immerse yourself in augmented reality right now, and without breaking the bank? Meet Mira Prism, a new iPhone-connected headset that provides augmented reality experiences for just $99.
The product is standalone and requires no plugs, computers or wires.
You just side your iPhone into the headset to begin exploring the wonders of interactive holographic content. It should be mentioned that Mira Prism does not put your iPhone's screen right in front of your eyes, like Google's Cardboard does.
Instead, your iPhone faces the inside of the headset and the front glass lenses facing you basically reflect computer imagery projected onto their surface by a pair of mirrors. The accessory has a 60-degree field of view and supports a resolution of 1,334-by-750 pixels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w76ESU3XHOg
While the headset only supports a small number of launch titles created specifically for it, they'll be releasing an SDK to let anyone create compatible augmented reality apps and games.
An accompanying app features spectator mode so those without a headset can see what others are seeing in augmented reality through the headset on their own iPhone or iPad.
Engadget took the gadget for a spin and came away impressed:
I played a holographic game that involved maneuvering a character through a maze, which relied on the controller’s motion controls.
Another game had me spinning around in my chair to destroy asteroids hovering all around me. I was particularly surprised how well Prism tracked virtual objects in augmented reality, even though it doesn’t have any spatial mapping technology like HoloLens and Meta.
Mira Prism ships with a remote control for motion-based games, a carrying case and a lens cover, and is compatible with any iPhone from iPhone 6s onward. The biggest drawback of Prism is the fact it won't work with any ARKit-optimized app, just stuff made specifically for it.
If you're interested in this product, pre-order it today for $99 from mirareality.com because it will retail for $150 once officially released in time for 2017 holiday.
Apple's new ARKit framework for building augmented reality experiences for compatible iPhone and iPad devices is off to a great start and already Facebook is taking notice, according to a new report Thursday from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
The author claims that Facebook has been hard at work developing an inexpensive headset, code-named “Pacific”, that is expected to bring virtual reality experiences to the masses without requiring a beefy computer or a compatible smartphone.
“The idea is that someone will be able to pull the headset out of their bag and watch movies on a flight just the way you can now with a phone or tablet,” reads the article.
It should be priced aggressively at $200 and release at some point next year, representing “an entirely new category”. According to people familiar with the plans, the device will provide a similar interface to Samsung’s VR Gear that users could control by a wireless remote.
The headset should be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile chip that would make it superior to Samsung's Gear VR headset in terms of gaming in virtual reality. Unlike the current Oculus Rift hardware, the upcoming gizmo won't include positional tracking technology.
An excerpt from the article:
This means that the device won’t be able to tell where its user is spatially, which is useful for tasks like virtual rock climbing. A future version of the product will have that technology, according to a person familiar with the plans.
According to sources, the headset will let users play immersive games, watch video, use social networking apps and so forth. It resembles a more compact version of the current Oculus Rift and will be lighter than Samsung’s Gear VR headset.
Handset maker Xiaomi and its manufacturers are said to build 2018's Oculus-branded device.
And later this year, Facebook allegedly plans to announce a more affordable wireless headset that it is betting will popularize virtual reality “the way Apple did the smartphone”.
Oculus spokesman Alan Cooper said via email:
We don’t have a product to unveil at this time, however we can confirm we’re making several significant technology investments in the standalone VR category.
Facebook's said it’s also working on yet another device, code-named “Santa Cruz” and best described as a wireless Oculus Rift “with the full power of the original device sans PC.“
Facebook acquired Kickstarter-funded Oculus startup in 2014 for about $2 billion.
IDC estimated that Samsung leads the pack in terms of VR device shipments with 22 percent of the global market for VR devices, followed by Sony, HTC and Facebook's Oculus Rift with about five percent of the market, or less than 100,000 units sold.
Apple has updated its figurative trademark for “iCloud”, filed with the Hong Kong Trademark Office, to include smart glasses and even a headset peripheral device. As you know, the Cupertino company is rumored to be working on a dedicated augmented reality headset or a smart glasses product with Carl Zeiss optics.
As first noted by PatentlyApple, since April of this year Apple has begun to include specific types of products to its trademarks covering the Mac Pro/iMac Pro computers and the ARKit framework for building augmented reality apps, including devices like smart glasses, head mounted displays, virtual and augmented reality displays and the like.
The iCloud trademark's international class 09 verbiage defines the headsets as falling under the context of “wearable digital electronic devices capable of providing access to the Internet” or “computer software for setting up, configuring, operating and controlling” these systems.
Likewise, the trademark meticulously lists the real-world applications for “smart glasses,” also covering things like “virtual and augmented reality displays, goggles, controllers, and headsets, 3D spectacles, eyeglasses, sunglasses, spectacle lenses, optical glass and optical goods”.
At last month's Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Samsung showed a secret standalone virtual headset prototype to partners. As spotted on VR Focus, the product uses technologies allowing it to track eye and hand movement as well as determine various facial expressions.
Dubbed Exynos VR III, the head-mounted accessory is apparently a successor to another Samsung headset prototype, called Exynos VR II, that was never officially released. Samsung already offers a virtual reality headset in the form of the Gear VR device which requires the user to dock and undock their smartphone every time they use it.
Thanks to Visual Camp, a VR company that developed eye-tracking technology for the secret VR headset, we know it's powered by a Samsung-designed 10nm hexa-core chip.
The chip includes a pair of Samsung M2 CPU cores clocked at 2.5 GHz, four ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores clocked at 1.7 GHz and ARM Mali G71 MP20 graphics capable of driving two built-in 2,560-by-1,440 pixel displays at 90Hz or a single 4K external screen at 75Hz.
As mentioned, unlike Samsung's current Gear VR headset that requires a smartphone to process data and render visuals, this all-in-one head-mounted display prototype packs in all the technology needed to render virtual worlds and apps standalone.
Visual Camp's press release announcing the Samsung deal says its eye-tracking tech lets VR headsets conserve power by rendering parts of a scene the user is currently looking at very high resolution while showing anything in peripheral vision in reduced resolution.
This technique is known as “foveated rendering”.
“Several other technologies will be applied to the Exynos 3, in addition to the company's eye-tracking technology, including hand tracking, voice recognition, and facial expression recognition,” reads the press release.
A measurement of the CPU power consumption of Samsung Electronics' Exynos 8890 chip resulted in the relatively low average figure of less than three percent, said Visual Camp.
Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook are researching eye-tracking technology, too.
Apple is rumored to be working on a digital glasses or a virtual headset product that may use optics by German specialists Carl Zeiss, thought to be released in 2018 or 2019. The Cupertino giant recently acquired SensoMotoric Instruments for an undisclosed sum.
SensoMotoric Instruments is a German company that specializes in eye tracking. Their technology also uses foveated rendering, understands facial expressions and recognizes participant gestures and external events.
Daydream, Google's new Android-powered virtual reality platform, was announced at the company's annual developer pilgrimage in May. Daydream View, Google's first virtual reality headset, is now available for purchase from a number of retailers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia for $79 apiece.