People are surprisingly willing to try goofy-looking VR headsets. They’re just not ready to buy. Facebook, owner of Oculus VR, is hoping that may change with a new lower price. On Wednesday, the company announced a permanent $100 price cut for each of its $599 Oculus Rift headset and $199 Touch motion controllers. They now …
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They say that numbers tell the story. If that’s true, then Google’s $15 Cardboard virtual reality viewer plays an oversized role in the virtual reality market. That’s because more than 10 million of the heavy paper viewers have shipped since 2014, and Cardboard apps have been downloaded 160 million times from Google Play. “And 30 of those apps have more …
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Apple may have over 1,000 engineers working on a project related to AR, UBS reports, and it could hit the iPhone 8 as early as this year. We’ve heard Tim Cook rave about augmented reality before, so this doesn’t come as a huge surprise. If Apple brings AR to the iPhone it will be competing with Google Tango enabled phones, …
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“Hi everyone — the photo you are all excited about is NOT what you think it is.” So said Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz on Twitter earlier this month, responding to the latest PR crisis embroiling his Florida-based augmented reality (AR) startup. Days before, Business Insider published what it said was the first photo of Magic Leap’s secretive, never-before-seen hardware. …
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Now playing: Watch this: Thwip! Zuck plays Spider-Man with VR gloves 1:21 Mark Zuckerberg is still trying to get to the future “a lot sooner.” The Facebook CEO took to the social network on Thursday to post a note about his recent visit to the Redmond, Washington-based research lab of Facebook-owned Oculus. Zuckerberg has been on a mission to make …
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In the minds of many, NBN equals speed. Or at least, it’s meant to. When’s it coming to my street? Why am I not getting full fibre? Why can’t I have crazy fast broadband right the hell now? Well, it turns out the NBN is ready to offer gigabit speeds right now, but retailers aren’t selling them. With last month’s …
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Facebook sees huge potential for it to grow in video. But YouTube, the reigning king of video, is keen to stay at the top of the heap. Against that backdrop, YouTube on Tuesday said it will soon let users start live-streaming from their phones, offering new competition to Facebook Live and Twitter’s Periscope. The new YouTube service was promised in …
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Microsoft‘s HoloLens headset isn’t a toy. There’s no release date for a consumer version, and the current oh-so-limited-but-awesome development kit costs US $3,000 a pop. And yet, I’ve never wanted to play with a HoloLens more. That’s because Toronto developer Kenny Wang figured out a way to use the HoloLens to bring Portal to the real world. Portal, in case …
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“You’ll be more comfortable removing your glasses.” No matter how many times I’ve worn a Vive VR headset — with glasses — I get asked to take them off in demo after demo. I politely decline. Sometimes, not so politely. I can’t see without my glasses. At about a -9 myopia with astigmatism, the world becomes a color blur. I’ve …
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Now playing: Watch this: Introducing Jon Hamm, the hologram 1:02 I trudged through a foot of snow to peek at how mixed reality may bring us closer to the stars we adore. OK, really, I trudged through a foot of snow to hold a miniature Jon Hamm in the palm of my hand. But mixed-reality revelations were a bonus. Jon …
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