Lifeboat Foundation

Taiwanese PC manufacturer Asus says it’s building an augmented reality device and aims to release it next year. According to a report from CNET, Asus CEO Jerry Shen confirmed the plans during an earnings call on Wednesday, arguing that augmented reality or AR will be more useful than virtual reality. “You can make a real setting meld together with yourself and the AR portion,” said Shen. “Internally, we are talking about how to prepare.”

Unlike VR, augmented reality doesn’t show you a completely fabricated view, but instead overlays digital elements onto the real world. The current frontrunner in this nascent field is Microsoft’s HoloLens, which the company has shown off in a range of impressive demos. However, the HoloLens is hampered by a number of problems, including bulkiness, constrained viewing angles, and a high price tag, with Microsoft releasing a $3,000 HoloLens developer kit in the first quarter of 2016. (By comparison, Samsung’s Gear VR, a virtual reality headset powered by the company’s smartphones, became available for preorder this week for just $99.) Asus has previously hinted that it might build its own version of the HoloLens, but as a company best known for its budget laptops, tablets, and smartphones, we wouldn’t expect it to match Microsoft’s price.

Despite the lack of unknowns surrounding Asus’s announcement, it’s still interesting to see a company align itself with augmented, rather than virtual, reality. The Verge’s Adi Robertson has argued that the complete immersion of VR makes it difficult for multitasking, and that augmented reality, by comparison, is more practical. Asus apparently agrees. “We think AR will be very important for people’s lives,” said Shen according to CNET. “It should be next year when we come out with a product.”

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA

In January this year Microsoft announced the HoloLens, a technology based on virtual and augmented reality (AR).

HoloLens supplements what you see with overlaid 3D images. It also uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate relevant information depending on the situation the wearer is in. The information is then augmented to your normal vision using virtual reality (VR).

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“Who said coloring was just for kids?”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29xnzxgCx6I/PLx1XbvvfIlc529HjUBHFmOAowGqoWnrdh

Well, this is it. The day all my dreams came true. I started out playing 2D side-scrollers in mall arcades in the 1980s, but I’ll soon be able to fight holographic robots bursting through my living room walls using my handheld blaster that’s a wearable hologram. WTF.

Today at Microsoft’s October 2015 event in New York, the team kicked off their new products announcement with a live HoloLens demonstration that pitted one headset-wearing Microsoft employee against arachnid alien bots crawling through a living room situation in what the company is calling “mixed reality gaming.” The demoed gameplay, codenamed Project X, allows you to defend any room in your home (or any other building) against encroaching alien invasion.

Continue reading “Project X Lets You Fight HoloLens Aliens In Your Living Room, And It’s Freaking Unreal” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=C3rNIxMlKmI

Microsoft took time during today’s Windows 10 Devices event to give the audience a more in-depth look at what its new HoloLens AR system is capable of. Minds were blown, jaws were dropped and more than a few digital robots were blown to smithereens during the 8-minute demo.

The game is called Project X-Ray. Microsoft developed it in-house as an experiment in “mixed-reality entertainment” and involves using the HoloLens controller as a ray gun to blast digital enemies which emerge from the room’s walls. Running around your living room while wearing a $3,000 headset (what Microsoft is reportedly planning to charge developers) probably isn’t the safest of indoor activities, but dang this game looks insanely fun regardless.

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A sequel to Steven Spielberg’s epic movie, MINORITY REPORT is set in Washington, D.C., 10 years after the demise of Precrime, a law enforcement agency tasked with identifying and eliminating criminals … before their crimes were committed. Now, in 2065, crime-solving is different, and justice leans more on sophisticated and trusted technology than on the instincts of the precogs. Sept. 21 series premiere Mondays 9/8:00c

LIMITLESS, based on the feature film, is a fast-paced drama about Brian Finch, who discovers the brain-boosting power of the mysterious drug NZT and is coerced by the FBI into using his extraordinary cognitive abilities to solve complex cases for them. Sept. 22 series premiere Tuesdays 10/9c

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Entertainment/New Media | Human Enhancement | VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics.

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Speaking at Salesforce’s Dreamforce 2015 conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shared updates on the company’s HoloLens holographic headset-based computing technology.

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We’ve been hearing and seeing plenty about augmented reality these days — from Microsoft’s HoloLens to the mysterious Google-backed startup Magic Leap — but aside from the gee-whiz factor, its benefits can sometimes feel almost as illusory as virtual images. Gaia Dempsey, managing director of DAQRI, which makes an AR-enabled smart hard hat, offers up a strong case for why augmented reality is more than just hype. In a new video for the upcoming Future of Storytelling Summit (which also produced the stunning video of animation legend Glen Keane drawing in VR), Dempsey explains how AR could fundamentally change the way we learn and experience the world. For example, it’s one thing to be told how the mechanics of a clock works in text or video, it’s an entirely different experience to be able to manipulate a moving set of clock gears in three dimensions.

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https://soundcloud.com/a16z/a16z-podcast-techs-big-ideas-and…andreessen