Apple now has “hundreds” of people working on virtual reality and has crafted prototypes for headsets in recent months, the Financial Times reported. They are doing work similar to Google’s Project Tango which aims to recreate environments and allow indoor navigations capabilities.
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Apple has recently stepped up its virtual reality plans by hiring top VR researcher Doug Bowman.
Flyby Media specializes in augmented reality.
“In terms of virtual reality, um, no, I don’t think it’s a niche”.
The company’s latest acquisition in the area is Flyby Media, an augmented reality start-up that lets mobile devices “see” the world around them. The company’s focus of a tight integration of hardware and software is also a good fit for VR, which demands that kind of symbiosis. Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 and is credited, along with Steve Wozniak, with marketing the world’s first personal computer in addition to the popular iPod, iPhone and iPad.
The Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR have been dominating the virtual reality conversation with immersive 3D experiences, but not a word has come from Apple, the biggest tech company on the planet.
It’s not certain how Apple plants to integrate VR technology with its products, but the tech giant definitely has something up its sleeves. The Oculus Rift headset from Facebook has a dedicated device for this task, but virtual reality head tracking would be an excellent new use case for the iPhone. However, Apple declined to comment anything on its plans in the augmented/virtual reality technology.
If you think Apple is going to spill the beans on what it’s working on, well, the best you’ll get is this vague statement from CEO Tim Cook during this week’s earnings call: “It is really cool and has some interesting applications”. It is also rumored that Apple is already testing out a few prototypes.
Move over drones, hoverboards and smartphones: Virtual reality (VR) headsets are expected to be a mainstream consumer purchase in 2016. And in 2014, when Facebook spent $2 billion to buy the virtual reality headset maker Oculus, the travel industry took notice.
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Last year, Apple acquired two more companies with expertise in AR/VR: augmented reality startup Metaio and motion-capture firm FaceShift. This would encourage developers to create more games, opening up opportunities for VR headset manufacturers.
