Are you prepared for the cavalcade of headsets coming your way? Next week, the Augmented World Expo (AWE) conference will officially start as a hybrid. AWE was among the first on the trade-show circuit to announce in-person activities, and they have a busy virtual conference as well. The first time we were lucky enough to try out the Varjo headset … Read more
News is rolling out about XR devices and peripherals in advance of the AWE conference, which this year will be one of the first events to be held in real-life (IRL) as well as virtually and recorded. Many vendors aren’t waiting for the conference to introduce their new devices, nor should they. One side effect of this long pandemic period … Read more
$100 million—get outta here Chinese augmented reality (AR) glasses maker Nreal raised $100 million and will use it for international expansion and development of new products. It has been suggested that the funding values Nreal at $700 million. The company was founded in 2017 in Beijing, China, by Bing Xiao and Chi Xu (who used to be at Magic … Read more
The doctor will see you now—bring your checkbook Magic Leap was founded by Rony Abovitz in 2010 and raised $2.6 billion from a prestigious list of investors. In December 2016, Forbes estimated that Magic Leap was worth $4.5 billion. On July 11, 2018, AT&T invested in the company and became its exclusive partner. Singapore’s Temasek valued the startup at … Read more
The Open Design Alliance conference has become a sprawling affair. Each year, the working groups present their work for the year and member companies show how they’ve been putting ODA technology to work. They are a productive bunch, and after a decade or so of banging on the challenges of CAD documentation, the group developed a very long list of … Read more
As companies in design and engineering are turning in their second and third quarters for the year, it’s been fascinating to see how fortunes have changed. Nemetschek, like many companies in AEC, took an early hit when coronavirus came to Europe and the US, the primary markets for Nemetschek. But as we have seen over and over in AEC and … Read more
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering that was formed in January 1963 from the amalgamation of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers. IEEE Day was established to celebrate the first worldwide gathering of engineers who came together to share their technical ideas in … Read more
Autodesk CFO Debbie Clifford described Autodesk’s financial results as strong, and that they were and that they have been. In his introductory comments, CEO Andrew Anagnost said the company offered its guidance at the start of 2021 during a period of “unwinding uncertainty,” which does communicate the bit of suspense that has accompanied the journey through Spring 2021. Nothing today … Read more
Graphisoft tends to look outward to complement its in-house tools. Its wholehearted support of OpenBIM gives users choices. And over the last three years Graphisoft has opened up those choices with ongoing support for Rhino Grasshopper and by extension Rhino thereby beefing up the modeling options for designers to include NURBS-based modeling. The Archicad 24 introduction brought users the ability … Read more
Image credit, JVC Creative Commons On a cool early autumn day in Bellingham, WA, in 1965. The Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers—SPIE staff were still in the glow of celebrating their 15th anniversary when they published Frederic Billingsley’s paper, Digital Video Processing at JPL. They didn’t know it at the time, but it was a landmark publication and firmly … Read more
(Source: Xiaomi) Xiaomi (pronounced show-me) announced their cleverly named Xiaomi Smart Glasses—the latest entry in new smart wearable devices. Xiaomi says their Smart Glasses (XSG) combine imaging systems and sensors into a subtle, ordinary glasses design using MicroLEDs with optical waveguide technology. The XSFs weigh 51 g. By comparison, Ray-Ban Original Wayfarer weighs 45 g, but unlike the conventional Ray-ban, … Read more
Traditional HMDs are bulky, power-hungry, and most of them fill only a small portion of the visual field with limited resolution. Those limitations plague every industry supplier and user in the AR and VR market, from manufacturing, training, and medical to military and entertainment. The issues are not new or unusual problems; it’s simply physics: there’s only so much light … Read more
