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A student YouTuber by the name of Lucas VRTech has designed and 3D printed a pair of low-cost finger tracking gloves for use in virtual reality. Named LucidVR, the open-source gloves are currently on iteration three, and grant users the ability to precisely track their fingers without the use of dedicated VR controllers. Lucas is […] 
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Magic Leap raised $794 million in new funding and CEO Rony Abovitz posted a blog suggesting the secretive company is moving closer toward a product, writing “we are setting up supply chain operations, manufacturing.” Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba led the round and Joe Tsai, Alibaba’s Executive Vice Chairman, is getting a seat on the board. The announcement roughly confirms a December report suggesting the company was raising money in this ballpark. The Series C round puts the Florida startup’s funding to date close to $1.4 billion.
Magic Leap also seems to have named its technology “Mixed Reality Lightfield” with subtle language in the blog post linked above that might be commentary about current VR technology, which isn’t able to perfectly reproduce what your eyes see in the real world. “It comes to life by following the rules of the eye and the brain, by being gentle, and by working with us, not against us,” Abovitz wrote about the company’s technology. “By following as closely as possible the rules of nature and biology.” Abovitz previously suggested Rift-like VR headsets have a history of “issues that near-eye stereoscopic 3d may cause” and that “we have done an internal hazard and risk analysis….on the spectrum of hazards that may occur to a wide array of users.”
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
The staggering amount raised by MagicLeap is all but virtual and makes Oculus Rift acquisition price look almost "reasonable".#SelfReminder: need to update my "Brief History of Interfaces" slide deck
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Google has announced it’s acquiring a $1.1bn chunk of HTC’s smartphone business, and with it providing the once leading Taiwanese phone brand a much needed lifeline. But what does Google want with part of a smartphone business?Google isn’t buying the whole of HTC, just a relatively large part of the Taipei-based company’s smartphone business and not its Vive virtual reality headset business. Google gains half of HTC’s research and development team – about 2,000 people – and a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property, allowing it to take advantage of some of HTC’s advances in smartphone technology.HTC gets a cash injection, which will help it survive in some very competitive markets, and Google gets to continue its “big bet on hardware” according to Rick Osterloh, the company’s senior vice president for hardware.It’s “a business decision to have access to one of the best R&D teams”, said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research. But it’s also “a sort of emotional decision to save its close partners”.Little history of hardwareWhile Google is the creator of the Android operating system, which is now used on more than 2bn devices a month, or 89% of mobile devices according to IDC, it has only dabbled with making its own smartphones and tablets. It routinely partnered with firms such as HTC, LG and Huawei to make the Nexus series of a devices, which sold in low volumes and acted as showcases for each new version of Android.Google bought Motorola in 2011 for $12.5bn (£9.24bn), and while it ran it as a separate company selling smartphones aimed at the low end, the acquisition was really about a large stock of important patents.“Its main reasoning was to acquire Moto’s patent portfolio so as to protect against Apple (and Microsoft) while also providing stiffer competition to Samsung (although Google would never admit this),” said David McQueen, research director at ABI Research.Google sold Motorola to China’s Lenovo in 2014 for $2.9bn without the collection of patents.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Hardware Is Not Dead. Talent is what matters.
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Oblong's implementation of the Minority Report Gloves was certainly more expensive — https://vimeo.com/76468455