Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: augmented reality – Page 42

O.o!

In what the German automaker is calling a “world premiere,” Volkswagen’s futuristic Golf GTI Aurora concept has a high-end sound system in its trunk that can be operated with a hologram.

You can leave your 3D glasses and augmented reality gloves at home: the hologram floats freely in the air and can be operated without any external aids. Though to be fair, VW is being very vague about the details of the technology behind the interface.

Floating Images

Scientists are only scratching the surface of creating 3D holograms that can be viewed from any angle. Current state holographic displays also tend to be extremely expensive and unwieldy.

Read more

Imagine the possibility of integrating mixed reality (XR) tech with that of this AImagine having a long, open conversation about philosophy with either Immanuel Kant or David Hume. Imagine being given a private lesson in economics by either Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, or Karl Marx. The possibilities are seemingly abundant. But then so are the risks.

A lot of coverage has been done on the emergence of what are known as “deepfakes” here on Serious Wonder the last few years. They’ve captivated us at times and then frightened us. The implications of this growing technology are practically limitless, especially as our ability to tell the difference between what is real and what is fake diminishes even further.

And just when you thought you could take a breather, Samsung decided to develop a new artificial intelligence system that makes generating deepfakes that much easier. Using nothing more than a single image, the AI system, known as “few-shot adversarial learning,” is able to create a fake clip that seemingly allows that image to burst to life.

Read more

“Minecraft Earth,” announced today, will allow users to collect items, blocks, and creatures while roaming around in the real world with other real-world friends — think of it as a “Minecraft”-themed “Pokémon Go” experience, but with more fishing, building and resource management.

While the extremely popular smartphone game “Pokémon Go” relied on augmented reality only minimally, the new “Minecraft” title will double down on the technology. A new feature called Azure Spatial Anchors will allow users to plop down objects in augmented reality — and persist indefinitely. Other users will also be able to interact with those same objects.

The goal is to eventually have players build their own “Minecraft” worlds for others to experience in augmented reality through their phones.

Read more

In the end, it wasn’t meant to be. Microsoft had pulled out all the stops for its Build 2019 developer conference keynote on Monday morning. The company had partnered with Epic Games and Industrial Light & Magic chief creative officer John Knoll for a hugely ambitious demo of its Hololens 2 headset that aimed to recreate the Apollo 11 moon landing, 50 years after the fact, in mixed reality.

All had worked out well during multiple rehearsals over the last few days. But when Knoll and science journalist and “Man on the Moon” author Andrew Chaikin were set to go on stage on Monday, the demo just didn’t run. Microsoft stalled by extending its pre-show ImagineCup competition until the show’s moderator couldn’t think of any more questions to ask. Then Knoll and Chaikin went on stage, giving it one more go — and the mixed-reality overlays simply refused to appear.

Read more

As the artificial brain races towards the singularity, what we often forget is the boost to human brainpower that will accompany it. As we increase our senses and perceptions, humans have a choice what to do with these new superpowers, that can be used to reinforce one’s tunnel vision of life or to ignore it.

This story is part of What Happens Next, our complete guide to understanding the future. Read more predictions about the Future of Fact.

Not everyone experiences the world in the same way. Whether it’s how you react to the results of an election or what tones you hear in a sound clip, observable reality is often not as objective as you think it is.

Emerging technologies such as augmented reality will further blur this line. With AR on mobile devices and head-mounted displays, we’re well within the start of what it means to live an augmented life. Humans are doing a lot of fun things right now, like integrating playful games into our world and painting ourselves with digitally applied effects and makeup. We’re also starting to find utility for AR in the workplace and with hardware designed specifically for the enterprise market.

Read more