Each week we scour the web for great articles and fascinating advances across our core topics, from robots to biotech and AI. We pay special attention to and are excited to see new ways of interfacing with the digital world. So, this week, we looked back at 2017 and selected a few of our favorite virtual and augmented reality stories for your reading and viewing pleasure.
See How NASA Envisions a ‘Mars 2030’ Landing in VR
Mariella Moon | Engadget
“A NASA-approved virtual experience called Mars 2030 has just landed on the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift and the PC through Steam. It puts you in the space shoes of an astronaut exploring 15 miles of Martian landscape, which was modeled after the planet’s real surface as captured by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera.”
Google Unveils ARCore, Its Answer to Apple’s ARKit, But It Will Be Hard to Catch Up
Mark Sullivan | Fast Company
“With ARCore, Google says, developers can create AR apps and games that run on virtually any Android smartphone—existing and forthcoming…ARCore games and apps will use an Android phone’s camera to determine the position and movement of the phone itself within a real-world environment.”
Now You Can Broadcast Facebook Live Videos From Virtual Reality
Daniel Terdiman | Fast Company
“The idea is fairly simple. Spaces allows up to four people—each of whom must have an Oculus Rift VR headset—to hang out together in VR. Together, they can talk, chat, draw, create new objects, watch 360-degree videos, share photos, and much more. And now, they can live-broadcast everything they do in Spaces, much the same way that any Facebook user can produce live video of real life and share it with the world.”
$99 Headset Could Be Augmented Reality’s First True Chance at a Mass Market
Rachel Metz | MIT Technology Review
“The headset, made by Mira, is like an AR version of Samsung’s Gear VR, which gives users a virtual-reality experience when they insert one of a few Samsung smartphones. With Mira’s Prism headset, though, the phone is positioned away from your face, and images shown on its display—one for each eye, as with stereoscopic 3-D for virtual reality—reflect off a clear lens and into your eyes so you perceive virtual objects at depth in front of you.”
Augmented Reality on Your Desk—All You Need Is a Lightbulb Socket
Rachel Metz | MIT Technology Review
“Called Desktopography, it uses a small projector, a depth sensor, and a computer to project images onto surfaces; the projections can move around to stay out of the way of objects that are also on the surface.”
