Virtual reality is a new tech buzzword and key players are taking notice, with Samsung Display showing off a cutting-edge smartphone display technology at the Display Week conference in San Francisco last week. The tech promises to let people enjoy 3D content without needing any special glasses.
Visit cities around the world from your device. Here’s how to explore and enjoy 3D Flyover Tours on Apple Maps for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac.
At its annual developers conference, the F8, which kicked off yesterday, the social networking giant Facebook announced an open-source spherical camera rig design which can shoot 360-degree video in 3D. Dubbed the Facebook Surround 360, the design consists of as many as fourteen wide-angle cameras bolted onto the horizontal ring.
There’s also a fish-eye camera on top and two on the bottom for a total of seventeen cameras that are synced with a global shutter mechanism. The accompanying software stitches the individual videos together into one seamless 360-degree footage.
3D printing is the wave of the future, and soon, you’ll be able to do it right from your smartphone, whether it’s an iPhone, Windows phone, or Android phone.
OLO 3D has launched a Kickstarter campaign for a super affordable 3D printer for your smartphone starting at $99, and within just a week, the campaign has gone viral and user response for the idea has excelled at an incredible rate. Out of the $80,000 goal, the campaign has already raised well over $1,100,000 as of this writing.
So how does it work?
Your brand spanking new Apple TV does a lot of nice things pretty well, and some really cool ones Apple hasn’t even mentioned officially.
As first discovered by developer Steve Stroughton-Smith, the set-top box can actually render stereoscopic 3D content provided an app has implemented the functionality and the customer owns a 3D-enabled TV set to enjoy it on.
Specifically, he has identified stereoscopic 3D support within Pangea Software’s Bugdom 2, which has been refreshed in the App Store to work on the new Apple TV.
Apple on Tuesday added 20 new locations to the 3D Flyover feature in its iOS and OS X Maps applications. The new spots include cities and landmarks in the US, Japan, Italy, Spain and France.
First introduced when Apple Maps launched in 2012, the Flyover feature allows users to take interactive, three-demensional virtual tours of various points of interest from around the world.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a new Apple patent application on Thursday entitled “Spatially interactive computing device.” The filing describes an advanced display system that can output both 2D and 3D images at the same time, without the need for specialized glasses.
More specifically, the display uses multiple layers to provide differing output to a viewer’s left and right eyes, as well as adaptive eye-tracking courtesy of a built-in image sensor. These technologies allow the display to produce 3D images to one user, or multiple images to different users, simultaneously.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office published 41 patents today that it recently awarded to Apple. We’ve already covered one pertaining to VR headsets, and Patently Apple points us to another worth mentioning related to 3D virtual keyboards.
The patent is titled “Virtual keyboard for a non-tactile three dimensional user interface,” and it covers a 3D capturing device that uses cameras to detect hand movements, allowing users to type on a virtual keyboard by simply moving their hands or fingers.
The next iPhone released may feature a glasses-free 3D display, according to a report from Economic Daily News. The Taiwanese publication says that Apple supply chain partner TPK is currently raising funds for an upcoming Apple project, and its sources indicate it has something to do with a “naked eye 3D screen.”
As we’ve stated before, Economic Daily News has a spotty track record in providing Apple intel, posting dozens of both accurate and inaccurate stories. It’s possible, though, that Apple is planning to make 3D displays one of the headlining features of its next iPhone, much like Touch ID and Siri were for 5s and 4s models.
Conveniently, Apple’s added a 3D Flyover view of the Yosemite National Park in California and Wellington in New Zealand to its Maps service, available across Mac and iOS devices. The latest addition allows you to check out Yosemite’s landmarks, or the buildings and other structures in the city of Wellington.
3D Flyover views for the Auckland and Christchurch areas in New Zealand have been added to Apple Maps earlier in the year. The Cupertino company has updated the Flyover availability webpage by adding Wellington and Yosemite to the list…
The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that Google is building a new tablet with advanced 3D imaging capabilities. The device is being developed as part of the company’s ‘Project Tango,’ which produced a smartphone back in February.
Citing sources familiar with the project, the news outlet says that the tablet has a 7-inch display and is equipped with two rear cameras, infrared depth sensors, and advanced software that can capture precise three-dimensional images of objects…
Google has beat Apple to the punch by using PrimeSense’s Capri PS1200 3D imaging system-on-a-chip in the Project Tango smartphone, before Apple could in its iPhone line-up, the teardown specialists over at iFixit found.
PrimeSense is the 3D technology sensing company Apple acquired for $350 million late-November 2013, and its chips weren’t expected to be found in Google’s Project Tango smartphone given the fierce competition between the two companies. Only Movidius Myriad 1 3D-sensing chips were expected, but Apple’s PrimeSense showed up as well…
