"Apple hasn't come to my lab in 13 years - except they've come three times in the last three months.
One of the first stops for a Silicon Valley technologist interested in exploring virtual and augmented reality is Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, operated by Jeremy Bailenson since 2003. In the past week, he shared an interesting anecdote:
Stanford University's Jeremy Bailenson demoes a virtual-reality experience. Apple Stores recently started selling a product that turns an iPhone into a virtual-reality headset PrimeSense made camera and video-sensor hardware specifically tuned for computer-vision applications.Īnd those are just the ones we know about.
PrimeSense, which it bought for $360 million in 2013. Sophisticated computer-vision technology is needed in order to situate digital objects in their surroundings in a way that convinces the user they're real. FlyBy Media, a company that had previously worked with both Google and Apple on computer vision, a technology closely linked to augmented and virtual reality. FaceShift, a company that can transform a user's face into a 3D digital cartoon in real-time. Metaio, a German company that made an app that visualizes what digital furniture might look like in your home. Apple has bought at least 4 startups that specialized in related technologiesĪlthough Apple hasn't made a multibillion-dollar splash in the space like Facebook did when it bought Oculus for $2 billion, it's still a major buyer when it comes to VR startups. For instance, the company has hired Doug Bowman, a researcher from Virginia Tech who studies human-computer interaction, and, specifically, 3D interfaces - the kind of user interface that a new Apple virtual-reality headset would require.Īpple has also recently hired Nick Thompson, who previously worked on HoloLens, Microsoft's augmented-reality headset. LinkedIn profiles and publicly available job listings reflect this hiring trend. It's different from virtual reality, which totally immerses viewers in another world. Apple is staffing upĪpple already has a division working on augmented- and virtual-reality technologies, and the team has already been building prototype headsets for months, according to a report by the Financial Times' Tim Bradshaw.Īugmented reality is where computer-generated images appear to be superimposed on the real world, like with Microsoft's HoloLens or Google Glass. Apple releasing a product would obviously be a big deal for the industry.Īpple is notoriously tight-lipped, but a project of this size is hard to keep under wraps. VR has been a dream for futurists for decades, but the technology has never been good enough for it to take off. The dream: to immerse viewers in a totally computer-generated world. Game enthusiasts test the Samsung Gear VR powered by Oculus at the Annual Gaming Industry Conference E3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center on June 16, 2015, in Los Angeles, California.Ī growing amount of evidence indicates that Apple is developing something with virtual-reality technology.
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