2020 and the spatial years

Hi everybody,

2019 is coming to an end (well, kind of) and I will finish my craziest year so far. We’ve been very busy developing AR/VR solutions in our company, but in parallel I started to raise my new born son with my wife. The biggest change you can have in your life! Also the greatest (and toughest) experience. That’s also why some of my posts got lost in limbo. I guess I have a good excuse for 2019.

E.g. by now everybody has tried the HoloLens 2 or had the chance to read one of the many reviews. I discuss my HoloLens 2 impressions with my podcast team on mixed.de in episode #167. In short: great to have gestures and comfort, but FOV still crap, gestures also sometimes fail. Damn. In the same episode we also discuss the new Varjo VR glasses (with finger tracking) and the augmented reality glasses A6 by Lenovo. I wrote an article on them here.

So, there is a gap here not talking about Apple’s announcement of releasing some-kind-of-glasses in 2021 and later on for real consumer AR… Well, but then again: what to talk about? There is nothing there yet. Just a buch of patents and a leaked internal presentation. Well, maybe I will sit down nevertheless and sum up my dream glasses to submit to Apple (aren’t they missing a design lead now anyway?)…

Meanwhile I play with 8th Wall or display.land to create some fun AR world 3D scans. What remains to be done before going offline to Christmas? Let me compile a few upcoming events for you to check out. This list is neither complete nor sorted by priority. It’s just my personal next steps to attend or review. Let’s take a look:

CES, January, 7th – 10th, Las Vegas

Like every year the CES tries to convince all consumers to come to Las Vegas to spend even more money right after Christmas. All companies contributing are having a hard time during Christmas “break” to finish their demos just in time to be ready for the show on January, 7th (I did too in the past, no fun). Anyway, the year will kick off early with tech news and there is a dedicated AR/VR section you can check out here. E.g. the above image comes from Plessey, a provider of MicroLED tech that could bring us a missing piece for AR glasses. Let’s observe!

LearnTec, January, 28th – 30th, Karlsruhe (Germany)

Many clients we speak wish a modern way of training for their staff or telepresence solutions to conduct joint sessions at a distance. Lots of AR products or demos focus on the future of digital learning or supported maintenance and training. In 2020 it’s again time for LearnTec in Germany – a conference focused on all around digital learning / teaching. Over 12k attendees with more than 300 exhibitors from more than 15 nations give insight to the hopefully digitally-enhanced era (Germany is a bit behind with this these days you know…). The conference has a dedicated section for AR/VR, too. Bigger or well-known companies in this sector (like Viscopic or Lufthansa Cargo) will be present such as many universities or institutes. We will also have a booth at the conference to show our MR training solutions – so, let me know to meet up if you are there! (Since this is a personal blog I can do shameless advertising for us.)

XR Europe, April, 8th – 29th, London (UK)

Where XR goes mainstream! I’ve just teamed up with the organizers from XR Europe as media partner to promote the new event. They will invite us to London to give us all insights on XR technology – from pros to pros. Focus is on C-Level and management, but everybody is supposed to get a hands-on insight and help within the (rather) young industry. Their website will be growing over the next weeks to publish more speakers and the updated agenda. So, feel free to check out their plan for a mixed reality-filled London in April.

To kick things off and to pass the time until Christmas you are invited to join their webinar next week to talk about how to deliver real value across enterprise and consumer entertainment with virtual and augmented reality.

Augmented World Expo, May, 27th – 29th, Santa Clara (USA)

As every year I’m eagerly awaiting the Augmented World Expo US show (to attend remotely) before Ori and his team ship over to Europe later on. There is still time to register as a speaker (list growing) or exhibitor. The event should be definitely on your list and augmented.org will continue as media partner to report. Now everybody is going towards the term SPATIAL – and I like it. Big players from the industry will definitely be present again and already players like Microsoft pop up in their list. Hanging out in Santa Clara isn’t too bad, neither. So, stay tuned and check the agenda over time here – on your puny little flatland screen!

More to come!

So, time for a short break then. Please let me know which events in the first quarter of 2020 are worth checking out and get in touch with me! Happy to join the fun and spread the word. With that said, I wish you all a very merry Christmas, family time off or whatever slogan you might prefer for “inbetween the years”. I can’t wait to step into 2020 getting closer to possible publications or more spatial computing technology (software-wise) and the matching hardware soon… After all, my son shouldn’t be pushing around a mouse anymore in a few years (that’s for the old folks) and I love to level the way with you all towards a more natural interaction and integration of digital data into our space.

But still, now it’s time to switch off the device. See you on the other side, guys!