Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality
01 Snap
Imagine pointing your
Snapchat camera at your feet to see how a pair of Gucci shoes would look on you, then simply pushing a button on the lens to make the purchase. Snap’s AR try-on technology, launched last June, allows you to do just that. With its new Camera Kit tool, Snap is also letting brands like MLB and Nike build Snapchat AR lenses into their own apps, for their communities to enjoy.
02 Supernatural
The immersive workout app Supernatural shows that when done well, fitness is VR’S best application. Debuting last spring, precisely when people wanted inspiring at-home workouts, Supernatural put users in beautiful environments while offering full-body workouts and expert, one-on-one coaching. The experience ($180 a year for Oculus Quest) also includes a wide range of music to choose from.
03 Valve
Valve, which makes VR headsets and games, wowed users with Half-life: Alyx, the year’s biggest mixed-reality release. The game deftly updates the physics of earlier Half-life games for VR: Players fight, explore, solve puzzles, and endure horrific environments in a quest to capture a superweapon belonging to an alien combine. Valve’s
Index VR platform also features a slick new controller.
04 Qualcomm
The dominant provider of both 5G modems and mobile processing chips, Qualcomm, in 2020, released fresh silicon that unites 5G connectivity with mixed-reality image processing. This brings us closer to the dream of being able to do some image processing in the cloud. The company also launched a certification process so that smaller AR glasses makers could build their devices around those chips.
05 Nreal
Chinese startup Nreal was the first to show us what a true mixed-reality consumer product looks like—one that is more like a pair of glasses than a helmet and costs less than $500. After its splashy introduction at CES, in 2020, Nreal’s glasses debuted to acclaim in South Korea and Japan, where the 5G rollout is further along. Nreal partnered with Deutsche Telecom for its upcoming European launch. 08 8th Wall 8th Wall developed a phonebased AR platform that supports light detection, surface and edge detection, and six degrees of freedom in object motion—able to run in a mobile browser, no app required. In 2020, Lego used it in Harry Potter sets that turned walls into magic portals, and Burger King teleported the “King” and rapper Lil Yachty into viewers’ homes during the MTV VMAS.
06 Spatial
Spatial’s 3D collaboration environment lets participants from around the building (or around the world) represent themselves in a virtual work space via a realistic avatar. The experience is good enough to allow remote teams to work together, especially when developing physical products. And just in time for the pandemic, Spatial expanded to Oculus Quest and Quest 2 headsets and Nreal glasses.
09 Appliedvr
The leader in VR content companies that specialize in helping people deal with pain and anxiety, Appliedvr’s software is developed by a team of psychologists, doctors, researchers, and patients, and is meant for use within clinical settings. This year, it found a new use case in providing relief to people who have been traumatized after contracting COVID-19.
10 Providences Films
Antoine Viviani and Pierre-alain Giraud’s mixed-reality experience Solastalgia (named for the psychic trauma induced by climate disaster) was one of 2020’s buzziest VR shorts. It casts up to 12 people (wearing VR headsets) as visitors from the future on a destroyed planet. The darkly beautiful experience, with wellrendered backgrounds and custom effects, sends a clear message about our own planet.