Vuzix announced in a press release that the Consumer Technology Association, the producer of CES 2016, has awarded the company eight CES Innovation Awards. Several are for devices aimed at consumers, such as video eyewear and VR glasses.

Vuzix iWear Wireless Awarded CES 2016 Best of Innovation Award in Gaming & Virtual Reality category (PRNewsFoto/Vuzix Corporation)

Other new models will be well suited for enterprise use cases.

The Vuzix Vidwear B3000 and Vuzix Vidwear M3000 Smart Glasses were each honored with dual CES Innovation Awards for innovative design and engineering. Unfortunately, the company has not published product information about these new models on its web site. The announcement only describes the Vuzix Vidwear B3000 as one of the world’s first sunglasses with integrated video and AR overlays.

According to the same announcement, Vuzix M3000 Smart Glasses will leverage the company’s waveguide-based wearable eyewear for enterprise. Most likely, they will be monocular and have significantly improved display resolution, ergonomics, computing power, and sensor technologies. The  announcement suggests that the see-through waveguide-based display engine in the M3000 will be optimized to deliver network-based content for Augmented Reality experiences in the workplace.

Rochester Optical, a diversified lens and frame manufacturer based in Rochester NY, develops, fabricates and delivers advanced prescription lenses and other accessories for use with smart glasses.

The company’s Smart GOLD product line is available for Google Glass, Sony SmartGlasses, Vuzix M100, Epson Moverio BT-200 and Recon Jet. By creating an additional, optimized optical center where the digital information appears in Augmented Reality view and compensating to balance binocular vision, Smart GOLD eliminates prismatic effect and off axis aberrations, providing continuous, comfortable visual acuity. These features permit those who need corrective lenses to more easily benefit from smart glasses features without wearing two pairs of glasses. The technology also reduces eyestrain and eye fatigue, allowing smart glasses to be worn more comfortably for extended periods of time.

The company announced in a press release that it now provides a new model of goggles for use with Epson Moverio BT-200. The goggles come in black and clear.

For enterprise Augmented Reality users, the RO S68 Solitaire Ace helps to distribute the Epson BT-200’s weight for comfort and keeps the device secure. When used with medical-grade silicone foam, the seal is appropriate for a multitude of use cases.

Many developers of stand-alone Augmented Reality experiences rely on the Unity game engine for user interface and integration with well-established technology enablers on mobile platforms. In a press release issued by Kudan Limited, the company announced that its Augmented Reality SDK now includes a plug in for Unity.

The Unity plug in for Kudan SDK gives developers the ability to add occlusion to real world objects, adding depth and interactivity to a scene. The Kudan AR SDK also offers a capability to position AR content on any surface. Known as markerless tracking, it does not require a trigger image or location.

Kudan is making its Unity plug in package available for developers at no cost.

NEC Corporation has announced that its research group has been working on a new product: the ARmKeypad. The ARmKeypad uses smart glasses paired with a smartwatch to display information on the user’s arm with Augmented Reality.

According to the article on TechTimes web site, the wearer of both the glasses and the watch see the information on the forearm. Since the accelerometer in the watch tracks the wearer’s motion the user can use the forearm as if it were a digital input device. One use case is for the user to type on a virtual keyboard that appears on the forearm.

The company’s announcement suggests that it could be available for use by factory workers as soon as 2016.

The level of hype surrounding HoloLens just took another boost into the stratosphere. In an article on ZDnet, Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft put its new transparent holographic head-worn display in its own glass display case in the company’s first New York City flagship store, which opened on October 30.

Like Apple stores, Microsoft stores permit the general public to try out hardware that they may wish to purchase. The new store features the XBox One and a wide range of laptops for personal use.

Maybe there’s more to Microsoft’s store strategy than meets the eye? The fact that the store also has a Surface Hub, a system clearly aiming corporate customers, prompted ars technica’s Peter Bright to speculate in this article about the store’s opening, that the company’s future plans for stores may include greater emphasis on permitting corporate buyers to try out enterprise solutions, including the HoloLens.

Urban development is a heavily regulated process. Regulations about what can be built, materials for building and the infrastructure to support new construction or renovations protect businesses and consumers from a variety of risks to life and property. But regulations can also be highly complex and difficult to visualize in the urban landscape.

This article in the Wall Street Journal describes the use of a mobile Augmented Reality system to help architects, elected officials and others visualize the possible future scenarios in Jersey City, New Jersey. Residential development is booming in Jersey City. There are 8,000 apartments under construction and 18,000 approved projects on the way. However, commercial projects have an additional layer of complexity that is difficult for potential project partners to understand. Using mobile technology is making it easier for stakeholders to understand and engage in productive dialog.

Rokitt, a custom application development company focusing on emerging technologies, issued a press release describing its application, called ‘Jersey City ROARs,’ and demonstrated it at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Conference in New York.

Getting good and unbiased information about Augmented Reality in front of large audiences can be challenging. When Fast Company picked up and published a new infographic of the landscape of technology providers offering Augmented Reality it was shared quickly and went viral.

Originally published earlier this month in a blog post by Manatt Digital Media, a professional services provider in this market, the infographic shows interesting data and a landscape depicted as a Venn diagram.

Although not focusing on enterprise uses or technology providers the infographic shows players in the three essential elements of Augmented Reality: content, hardware and software.

Mobile network providers are beginning to experiment with 5G technology. One of the benefits of 5G is network slicing. According to an article published on Total Telecom web site, “network slicing makes use of software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) to partition a single physical network into multiple virtual networks with capacity and coverage tailored to meet the individual requirements of a diverse range of use cases. With network slicing, a mobile operator can provide networks on an as-a-service basis, for example using one slice to meet the needs of low-capacity, massive machine-to-machine (M2M) communication services, and another to cater to bandwidth-hungry, low latency services such as automated driving.” The benefit is that data packets traversing one slice do not adversely affect the operation of other services using the same network.

In a collaborative project publicized in the Total Telecom editorial, SK Telecom and Ericsson report that they have demonstrated their ability to create different virtual network slices optimized for Augmented Reality services.

The tech media is ablaze with the announcement that Amazon has been awarded a patent by the US Patent Office for a novel hands-free display system. This post on Recode.net is among those which points out that, unlike many other hands-free displays, the proposed Amazon system, described at the time of filing in 2013, relies on a tablet or another companion computing device.

Amazon’s patent also covers the ability for the display to switch between transparent and opaque properties upon the user’s request. When the display is opaque, the system produces a fully immersive experience. This can be either for looking at still images, watching video content or interacting in a VR world. When transparent, the system supports Augmented Reality experience delivery.

Of course, there remains significant investment between a patent and the introduction of a commercial hardware product. Getting hardware to commercial success is also a long term, expensive journey and the competition in this product class is steep.

Ralph Osterhout is the CEO of Osterhout Design Group. The inventor was interviewed on ABC Lateline about his vision of the world with hands-free displays and smart glasses. During the interview Osterhout predicted that devices like those his company provides will become ubiquitous.

The company’s primary customers to date have been government agencies, namely the armed forces. Osterhout predicts that devices for military and industry applications will eventually have Doppler technology, which he claimed could see through walls and detect a beating heart from up to 150 meters away. Fortunately, technologies used in devices planned for mass market adoption will significantly diverge from those used in combat.