Minecraft Earth early access is underway. Microsoft’s new AR game built on the popularity of Minecraft is hitting iOS and Android devices around the globe this month. Players can craft using their favorite blocks both on table tops and in a “life sized” mode. The experience is multiplayer and even features occlusion of people when multiple players are occupying the same space.
Stating the obvious in the Q3 conference all with analysts, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg admitted VR is taking longer than expected to break through with consumers. Nonetheless, Facebook believes they are making good progress. “We are selling the Quests as quickly as we can make them,” the FB topper said at Oculus Connect eight weeks ago.
The Vuzix Blade almost feels like a regular pair of glasses.
Vuzix scores $7.1 million dollar order of XR smartglasses from SWORD. SWORD is rolling out a SWORD Enterprise security product that includes technologies for concealed weapons detection, facial recognition and gunshot detection. Designed for use by security personnel in spaces such as banks, sporting arenas, airports, etc. the Vuzix smart glasses will provide heads up information to aid split second decision making without obstructing sight.
ScopeAR now offers support for the Hololens 2. Now the Hololens 2 is available for purchase, ScopeAR is pushing any necessary updates for its products to work on the new headset.
Ubimax launches Everything-as-a-Service(Xaas) monthly option for enterprise AR. The new monthly pay-per-device service is designed to allow companies to integrate AR quickly. A monthly fee includes hardware, software, and services, reducing the upfront cost of investing in new technology outright. You can learn more about the new XaaS and sign up for a free webinar on Ubimax’s (German) website.
Resonai, an artificial intelligence and augmented reality company announced the launch of Vera, a computer vision platform to create intelligent digital twins of any building or physical space. Vera embeds intelligence into the physical environment to enable communication between any device or agent and its environments. With Vera, devices become context aware with unparalleled capabilities in positional tracking & semantic understanding, making them much smarter and more useful.
FundamentalVR closes $5.6 million series A to further development of VR based surgery training. The round was led by Downing Ventures, and also included participation from Mayo Clinic and Sana Kliniken. The series A brings the company’s total investment to $9.3 million. The funds will be used to further development of its flagship Fundamental Surgery VR training product.
Play with Coke’s Polar Bears in new AR experience. Created by the AR studio Tactic, the new AR app brings CocaCola’s packaging to life for the holiday season. Experiences in the app range from short animations, to playable snowball fights. You can activate the experiences by using the CocaCola app to scan CocaCola products and packaging.
The third in final chapter of Fable Studios' "Wolves In the Walls," is now available for the Rift.
Wolves in the Walls Chapter 3 available now on the Oculus Store. Wolves in the Walls Chapter 3: They’re Everywhere! is the conclusion to the VR adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Wolves in the Walls. Created by Pete Billington and Fable studios, the center of the experience is Lucy, a virtual being you the player interact with throughout the experience. The choices and interactions you make with Lucy in Chapters 1 and 2 influence Lucy’s understanding of you during Chapter 3.
Circuit Streem offering free XR development workshop November 14th. Circuit Streem offers a 10 week course on XR development using Unity. You can learn more about the free workshop here.
ONTOP reveals multiplayer AR game at QITCOM, powered by Vodafone. Up to four players can play and interact with an augmented reality game environment anchored in reality. Whether it’s discovering treasure, or fighting a fantastical character, players see shared content via their smartphone cameras. The game showcased at QITCOM was built with ONTOP’s “ARcadeSports” tools.
Niantic is now accepting applications to its creator program. The creator program, beginning in 2020, will provide access to the Niantic Real World Platform, a cloud based system for persistent AR content with features like real world occlusion. You can find more information about the program and apply on Niantic’s website.
Jumanji: Reverse the Curse experience lands at The VOID this holiday season. Starting November 27th at select VOID locations, players can step into the Jumanji game and play as one of the movie’s heroes. The experience was built in partnership between SPVR and The VOID, who also produced Ghostbusters™: Dimension, one of The VOID’s first VR experiences. More information on booking a play through of the new title is available on The VOID’s website.
University of Miami goes 5G+ thanks to AT&T. In a partnership with AT&T, the University of Miami will have millimeter wave 5G throughout the campus. The high bandwidth low latency signal will be used to power Magic Leap experiences as well as student projects.
Don’s miss our other stories this week:
Hologate reaches 5 million player milestone.
Sturfee Begins Large Scale AR Cloud Deployment in Japan
“This Week In XR” is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
