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This Week in ARExperience

April 28, 2022 by Jon Jaehnig

• Smartglasses manufacturer Vuzix has donated “a number of their M400 Smartglasses to Ukraine.” With the support of local operators and carriers, the glasses will help medical professionals in particular at a time when communication and transportation have been strained by the war with Russia.

• LED display inspection and repair company InZiv announced the closing of a $10M funding round. The company will use the money to continue its work in maintaining and improving high-definition AR displays, folding screens, and wearable technology.

• AR enterprise management software from Taqtile is included in the recently opened Oracle Industry Lab in Chicago. The facility offers training and resources for workers utilizing immersive technology so that the economic benefits of exponential technologies aren’t limited to people who are already techno wizards.

• Snap held their annual Partnership Summit this morning. The event included a number of big announcements for the company including:
  
  
  • A new Machine Learning-focused track for Snap’s “Ghost” developer program
    
    
  • New analytics features, ray tracing, and cloud tools are coming to Lens Studio
    
    
  • New tools for AR shopping
    
    
  • New tools for using profile info within Minis
    
    
  • New monetization options for creators including mid-role advertisements in stories
    
    
  • New “Director” tools

• Wendy’s released a teaser video launching “The Buck Biscuitdome,” a new feature in the fast food chain’s virtual presence within Horizons Worlds. The new virtual space is hyping the return of the company’s “buck biscuits” announced earlier this month but also seems to be one step in an ongoing metaverse marketing strategy.

• The Open AR Cloud Association announced Aurora Viewer, a Unity Client for image capture and authentication in WebAR applications. This is currently a three-month funded open source research project.

• Positioning company NextNav partnered with Widow Games to create an AR experience that incorporates a user’s elevation. This is an important step in a world where most geotagged AR experiences rely solely on the user’s GPS, which only provides 2D location data.

• This week’s announced AltspaceVR events include boogie & key’s Meta Auto Show on April 30^th. The event will feature “the top auto makers in the metaverse” showing off their creations. The virtual event in AltspaceVR will coincide with an in-person event at the Eastland Mall in Miami Florida.

• Tweets by PIXELORD and Ready Player Me tease a potential partnership between the virtual artist and the cross-platform avatar creator. RPM’s integration with the MetaMask Ethereum wallet help users to bring their virtual artefacts with them through the hundreds of virtual worlds compatible with the avatar engine.

Hardware announcements and positioning announcements make up a lot of the news this week – which is great. These important infrastructure developments often get lost as people focus on finish products and end-user initiatives. Of course, an auto show in Altspace and a Wendy’s in Worlds provide something for the end users as well.

In the middle, we have the slew of announcements from Snap. This company more than any other is enabling the users of consumer tech to be the creators driving consumer experience, not to mention the economic inroads of content monetization and eCommerce development.