The report even suggests that prototypes of the hypothetical Apple VR headset have been made in the past few months and that its inspired by the Oculus Rift. On Friday, it acquired Flyby Media, an augmented reality company that specialized in real-time indoor mapping.
Advertisement
Apple has already dropped some clues of its interest in augmented and virtual reality. But to hear it has “hundreds of staff” exclusively dedicated to the spaces may hint at it being revealed relatively soon.
According to the report, Apple has been busy assembling a sizable team of engineers and researchers with varied experience in virtual and augmented reality.
As well as ‘carefully targeted acquisitions, Apple has also snapped up employees from the likes of Microsoft and Lytro, according to the report. Fly-by’s team worked closely with Google in developing software for its 3D positioning technology Project Tango.
The app the company had built let mobile “scan” objects in the real world – like a hat, sign, poster, building, etc. – then save that item to a collection of shared objects. But in the future, it could be known for selling cars and headsets for virtual reality and augmented reality. Apple originally filed the patent back in 2008, although the concept of using a smartphone as the display and computing component is very similar to the Samsung Gear VR and the Google Cardboard Project.
Last year, Apple acquired several VR and AR technology companies including Metaio, Faceshift and Emotient.
On Apple’s recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook had this to say about VR: “It is really cool and has some interesting applications”. “In terms of virtual reality, no, I don’t think it’s a niche”, Cook said.
Apple’s best kept secret is a covert VR team?
Advertisement
Apple has been toying with VR for a number of years, filing a large number of patents with different takes on the technology. By comparison, virtual reality is often seen as images that are “closed”, or inside a device, usually a headset.
