We have come a long way from using blackboards and chalks to teach at schools. Technology has improved several areas in the education sector, such as how teachers teach, the materials they use, and how they assess their students. Students can now learn over the internet without being in a physical class, something we were forced to do this last year. Nevertheless, there are still several ways the education sector can be improved to engage students better and increase the retention of what they learn at school. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have shown how useful they can be in several i ..read more

Exactly one month after the Quest 2 was launched, Oculus, clearly not done for the year, released a series of updates to the Quest 2 and its predecessor, the Quest. The company released a v23 software update that includes new features such as app gifting, system-level fitness tracking, and 90Hz support for the Quest 2. The same day the software update was announced, Oculus Link also exited beta, more than a year after it was first announced. The updates are detailed below. Image Courtesy: UploadvrOculus Move The v23 software update to the Quest and Quest 2 includes a system-wide fitness tracke ..read more

If you’ve attended a meeting in the past year and a half, social or work-related, there’s a good chance that more than 90% of those meetings were held online. Even after social distancing and lockdown policies were eased the percentage only dropped slightly, making it clear that online meetings are here to stay. While online meetings became the norm due to necessity, their advantages cannot be denied. But like a lot of useful things, it also has several demerits. Besides the myriad of technical difficulties faced before and during an online meeting, several studies have shown that physical mee ..read more

Pico Interactive recently launched a consumer-facing VR headset called the Pico Neo 3. Like its predecessor, the Neo 2 Lite, the headset is available in China only. Perhaps the company felt it wasn’t ready to take on the Quest 2, one of the best standalone headsets around, just yet. Nevertheless, in a country where Oculus headsets are banned, Pico certainly has little competition to deal with. Image Courtesy: Smzdm The Neo 3 launched with even more lineups than its predecessor. In addition to Superhot VR that was launched with the Neo 2, several other popular titles such as Red Matter, Synth ..read more

Early last year, in February, XR startup Lynx announced that they would be launching a new device, the Lynx R-1. More than a year later, the company is yet to release the headset due to delays and modifications being made. But considering the various updates and additions made to the headsets, perhaps the wait will be worth it.  The Lynx R-1, a standalone mixed reality headset capable of VR and passthrough AR, was first announced as an enterprise-targeted device, set to launch at around $1500. The company, having pivoted, now plans to launch the headset for both businesses and consumers ..read more

IKEA has been one of the foremost names in the AR application space ever since its debut AR app, IKEA Place. It has since dedicated resources through its design and research lab, SPACE10, to explore the future of home technology. Combining the latest developments in spatial computing and IKEA’s knowledge of interior decor, SPACE10, developed a new AR application called IKEA Studio. Unlike IKEA Place where you can check out how a furniture item might fit in a space, IKEA Studio lets you design an entire room right from your phone. Image Courtesy: Ikea The app, which is currently only available ..read more

In an ideal virtual reality experience, we would be able to see, hear, smell, and feel things as we move around the virtual world. We should be able to go wherever we want, provided we can get there on foot. While we can do some of these things with the VR gear currently available on the market,  the VR industry is still quite far from achieving this ideal virtual experience. One obstacle preventing us from having a fully immersive experience is space. When you’re in a virtual world, you’re under the illusion that you have a different amount of space from what you have in the real world ..read more

Oculus entered the consumer VR market with PC-based headsets, Rift and Rift S. They both have a long cable attached to the headset that you plug into your PC. While this limited users’ movement and broke the immersive experience, the Rift and Rift S had better quality games like Asgard’s Wrath, Lone Echo, and Stormland. In the past, one had to choose between playing better quality games with the Rift or Rift S(or using Oculus Link with Quest headsets) or enjoying more freedom with Quest or Quest 2. This changed with the introduction of Air Link, a new feature from Oculus for streaming PC VR co ..read more

Apple is one of the biggest consumer tech companies alongside giants like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. It has been manufacturing various gadgets from iPhones to MacBooks to smart speakers. With augmented and virtual reality trending in recent times, and several VR and AR headsets popping up, you’d expect that Apple would have one of theirs by now. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft already have at least one product on the market, but there has been nothing from Apple so far. There have been several rumors that Apple is working on a pair of AR glasses. Apple in its usual manner did not comment ..read more

The augmented reality industry has come a long way since it became mainstream with products like Pokémon Go and Google Glass. We have since seen several AR products and applications come up. While the majority of the AR products currently on the market are phone-based, there have been several AR headsets and smart glasses developed in the past years. In this article, we discuss five of the best AR wearable devices of 2020 you can buy right now. Microsoft HoloLens 2 The HoloLens 2 is Microsoft’s second AR headset, and it’s perhaps the best AR headset right now. Unfortunately, it is designed for ..read more