AWE Report: towards the spatial computing age
The AR/VR world has gathered at the biggest event of our industry, the Augmented World Expo (AWE), held from May 29th to 31st, in Santa Clara, California.
The 10th anniversary of AWE USA registered over 350 speakers, 250 exhibitors, and 7.000 attendees. Every year the event displays the industry’s state-of-the-art and gives a glimpse of its future development, drawing together mainly specialized startups and small companies focused on advancing the technology within the ecosystem.
The first day was entirely dedicated to conferences, bringing on the stage keynote speakers from major players as Digi-Capital, Unity, and Facebook, who presented on the latest Augmented- and Virtual Reality’s developments with topics ranging from enterprise solutions to hardware devices, gaming, and cybersecurity. Three major speeches grabbed most of the audience attention. Ori Inbar, the AWE co-founder, kicked off the event with an assessment of its evolution over the last ten years from a small meetup of enthusiasts to the “most essential” AR/VR expo worldwide. He also talked about his signature topic – spatial computing – and how tech companies are leveraging AR, VR, and AI to make the new communication paradigm possible.
To follow, Tim Merel, CEO of Digi-Capital, addressed future market changes, with AR becoming ever more enterprise oriented, whereas VR will continue to dominate the gaming sector. He impressed the audience showing off how Apple has already 40% of the AR market share even without having released any device yet but only announced it. The hype is high mostly because Apple is well-known for its user-friendly tools and applications; thus everyone in the community is expecting some cutting-edge solution for smartphones that could bring AR to masses and shake up the whole industry.
Lastly, we listened to PTC’s CEO, Jim Heppelmann, whose smart framework for choosing the right AR technology and strategy according to the required tasks a customer must perform, caught our interest, as we agree that measures should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Some clients, for instance, might need markers or object recognition functions, while others don’t. We are going through an adjustment phase that emphasizes the practicality of AR applications rather than special effects. And now companies get the chance to choose from a variety of ways to leverage this technology and reach high-performing results within industrial processes.
AWE Report: towards the spatial computing age
The AR/VR world has gathered at the biggest event of our industry, the Augmented World Expo (AWE), held from May 29th to 31st, in Santa Clara, California.
The 10th anniversary of AWE USA registered over 350 speakers, 250 exhibitors, and 7.000 attendees. Every year the event displays the industry’s state-of-the-art and gives a glimpse of its future development, drawing together mainly specialized startups and small companies focused on advancing the technology within the ecosystem.
The first day was entirely dedicated to conferences, bringing on the stage keynote speakers from major players as Digi-Capital, Unity, and Facebook, who presented on the latest Augmented- and Virtual Reality’s developments with topics ranging from enterprise solutions to hardware devices, gaming, and cybersecurity. Three major speeches grabbed most of the audience attention. Ori Inbar, the AWE co-founder, kicked off the event with an assessment of its evolution over the last ten years from a small meetup of enthusiasts to the “most essential” AR/VR expo worldwide. He also talked about his signature topic – spatial computing – and how tech companies are leveraging AR, VR, and AI to make the new communication paradigm possible.
To follow, Tim Merel, CEO of Digi-Capital, addressed future market changes, with AR becoming ever more enterprise oriented, whereas VR will continue to dominate the gaming sector. He impressed the audience showing off how Apple has already 40% of the AR market share even without having released any device yet but only announced it. The hype is high mostly because Apple is well-known for its user-friendly tools and applications; thus everyone in the community is expecting some cutting-edge solution for smartphones that could bring AR to masses and shake up the whole industry.
Lastly, we listened to PTC’s CEO, Jim Heppelmann, whose smart framework for choosing the right AR technology and strategy according to the required tasks a customer must perform, caught our interest, as we agree that measures should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Some clients, for instance, might need markers or object recognition functions, while others don’t. We are going through an adjustment phase that emphasizes the practicality of AR applications rather than special effects. And now companies get the chance to choose from a variety of ways to leverage this technology and reach high-performing results within industrial processes.
The proper expo hall, Playground, Eyewear museum, and several workshops were fully accessible to the attendees starting from the second day, May 30, which also ended with the Auggie Awards Ceremony, the most recognized industry AR/VR awards.
Smart glasses have been the star of the event since they are becoming increasingly popular, and people were searching for tangible objects. We tried some of them. Here is what we think.
NReal showcased its new Nreal Light ready-to-wear glasses that we tried at Qualcomm’s booth. We experienced an AR scene of a singing character staged upon a table. By using the smartphone as a laser pointer, it was possible to start the concert. As stated by our CTO, Giuseppe Audino, “NReal mixed-reality glasses hold great potential to become the mainstream AR device; though, we still have to consider what is the headset-smartphones compatibility like, since handsets play a major role in terms of computational and battery power, ultimately affecting the overall AR experience.”
We must add that the tethering cable could be a downside, especially for our industrial customers, as it could obstruct their movements and endanger their safety. We can confirm though that they are comfortable, lightweight, and have an impressive Field of View (FoV) of 52 degrees, which makes the AR scene more immersive. The price is affordable, only $ 499, while the developer version costs $ 1.200. Nreal won the Auggie award for “Best in show” which we think they deserved as their products, communication, and presentation were really on point.
Moving on, at Lenovo’s booth, we put on the new ThinkReality A6 smart glasses that enabled us to follow a step by step guide to replacing an HD drive. Lenovo offer comprises an SDK and platform. Although object recognition and 3D rendering were not the best, we are going to keep an eye on their future releases, since they announced an upcoming enterprise model.
Another exciting device we got our hands on was Jimo smart glasses by Shadow Creator, which could be NReal competitors. It was possible to visualize AR dashboards floating in the air as with HoloLens 2 showed MWC earlier this year. Contrary to NReal, these are stand-alone, without cable, with a FoV of 55 degrees and an external recharging battery in addition to the internal one. The price is also very competitive. Shadow Creator’s representants were talking about $ 300. If you were to find a point of weakness is they come with a thin stem that seems very fragile to use in factory settings.
Fortunately, we have been bu our stand, but the event was too short to cover everything the Expo floor offered. For instance, we didn’t get the chance to try Focals by North, among the most hyped and interesting devices at AWE.
We definitely sensed the direction AR devices are taking: the trend divides between headsets tethered to smartphone powered by Qualcomm platform or stand-alone Smart Glasses.
Software-wise we noticed the majority of exhibitors, if not all, are currently developing solutions for remote support and authoring tools enabled by Augmented Reality technology. Most have a so-called ‘conservative’ approach: they rely on third parties SDKs as ARKit, ARCore, or markers, using Unity to create AR objects. They usually sell just a plugin which turns to be quite complicated for the end user. Instead of investing in a ready-to-use product, the enterprise ends up buying product training services which ultimately are accessible to professionals only, as CAD experts and developers.
The proper expo hall, Playground, Eyewear museum, and several workshops were fully accessible to the attendees starting from the second day, May 30, which also ended with the Auggie Awards Ceremony, the most recognized industry AR/VR awards.
Smart glasses have been the star of the event since they are becoming increasingly popular, and people were searching for tangible objects. We tried some of them. Here is what we think.
NReal showcased its new Nreal Light ready-to-wear glasses that we tried at Qualcomm’s booth. We experienced an AR scene of a singing character staged upon a table. By using the smartphone as a laser pointer, it was possible to start the concert. As stated by our CTO, Giuseppe Audino, “NReal mixed-reality glasses hold great potential to become the mainstream AR device; though, we still have to consider what is the headset-smartphones compatibility like, since handsets play a major role in terms of computational and battery power, ultimately affecting the overall AR experience.”
We must add that the tethering cable could be a downside, especially for our industrial customers, as it could obstruct their movements and endanger their safety. We can confirm though that they are comfortable, lightweight, and have an impressive Field of View (FoV) of 52 degrees, which makes the AR scene more immersive. The price is affordable, only $ 499, while the developer version costs $ 1.200. Nreal won the Auggie award for “Best in show” which we think they deserved as their products, communication, and presentation were really on point.
Moving on, at Lenovo’s booth, we put on the new ThinkReality A6 smart glasses that enabled us to follow a step by step guide to replacing an HD drive. Lenovo offer comprises an SDK and platform. Although object recognition and 3D rendering were not the best, we are going to keep an eye on their future releases, since they announced an upcoming enterprise model.
Another exciting device we got our hands on was Jimo smart glasses by Shadow Creator, which could be NReal competitors. It was possible to visualize AR dashboards floating in the air as with HoloLens 2 showed MWC earlier this year. Contrary to NReal, these are stand-alone, without cable, with a FoV of 55 degrees and an external recharging battery in addition to the internal one. The price is also very competitive. Shadow Creator’s representants were talking about $ 300. If you were to find a point of weakness is they come with a thin stem that seems very fragile to use in factory settings.
Fortunately, we have been bu our stand, but the event was too short to cover everything the Expo floor offered. For instance, we didn’t get the chance to try Focals by North, among the most hyped and interesting devices at AWE.
We definitely sensed the direction AR devices are taking: the trend divides between headsets tethered to smartphone powered by Qualcomm platform or stand-alone Smart Glasses.
Software-wise we noticed the majority of exhibitors, if not all, are currently developing solutions for remote support and authoring tools enabled by Augmented Reality technology. Most have a so-called ‘conservative’ approach: they rely on third parties SDKs as ARKit, ARCore, or markers, using Unity to create AR objects. They usually sell just a plugin which turns to be quite complicated for the end user. Instead of investing in a ready-to-use product, the enterprise ends up buying product training services which ultimately are accessible to professionals only, as CAD experts and developers.
JoinPad’s approach is to develop everything from the ground up, coding our algorithms to make sure we have control of our products and can adapt them fast based on the client needs. At AWE, we unveiled the updated Smart Assistance app for remote support based on Augmented Reality technology. Through live video streaming, users can share the same view and interact real-time to give instructions about a particular maintenance operation using Augmented Reality free-hand annotations or embedded 3D graphical elements (widgets). The app was an AWE exclusive which could be downloaded only be receiving the card with a specific QR Code, for a free-trial period of 15 days ( or until June 14th, 2019). We also brought the brand new BrainPad platform, an authoring tool that enables even employees lacking coding skills to easily create work and training manuals based on Augmented Reality for a fast, error-free, and hands-on performance. At our stand, visitors and potential prospects got a chance to try our demos expressing great interest in our solutions. Many appreciated the possibility to have an app that immediately shows what you have created with BrainPad.
JoinPad’s approach is to develop everything from the ground up, coding our algorithms to make sure we have control of our products and can adapt them fast based on the client needs. At AWE, we unveiled the updated Smart Assistance app for remote support based on Augmented Reality technology. Through live video streaming, users can share the same view and interact real-time to give instructions about a particular maintenance operation using Augmented Reality free-hand annotations or embedded 3D graphical elements (widgets). The app was an AWE exclusive which could be downloaded only be receiving the card with a specific QR Code, for a free-trial period of 15 days ( or until June 14th, 2019). We also brought the brand new BrainPad platform, an authoring tool that enables even employees lacking coding skills to easily create work and training manuals based on Augmented Reality for a fast, error-free, and hands-on performance. At our stand, visitors and potential prospects got a chance to try our demos expressing great interest in our solutions. Many appreciated the possibility to have an app that immediately shows what you have created with BrainPad.
People from all over the world flew to Silicon Valley to participate in AWE, which still is an essential event to attend for those who want to develop a good knowledge of the AR / VR world nowadays. For the first time, the Milanese chapter of the VRARA also gathered at the Expo, giving us the chance to meet and discuss with each other what we saw and learned. We cannot wait to apply the newly acquired knowledge to the Italian community and market.
After participating in AWE for nine years in a row, our CEO, Mauro Rubin, noticed a generational turnover of exhibitors and attendees, with surging interest in the enterprise AR which will be the primary driver of the Smart Glasses industry.
People from all over the world flew to Silicon Valley to participate in AWE, which still is an essential event to attend for those who want to develop a good knowledge of the AR / VR world nowadays. For the first time, the Milanese chapter of the VRARA also gathered at the Expo, giving us the chance to meet and discuss with each other what we saw and learned. We cannot wait to apply the newly acquired knowledge to the Italian community and market.
After participating in AWE for nine years in a row, our CEO, Mauro Rubin, noticed a generational turnover of exhibitors and attendees, with surging interest in the enterprise AR which will be the primary driver of the Smart Glasses industry.
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