Apple has assembled large team for VR, has headsets prototyped

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our objective or plans”, the source read. Other acquisitions include PrimeSense, a motion sensing company, and Apple has been poaching employees from camera maker Lytro, Microsoft’s Hololens project, and others.

Facebook acquired the VR headset developer Rift in 2014 for $2 billion, and Google is developing a VR headset known as Cardboard. However, Apple has been conspicuously silent about any plans to enter the field.

One can imagine the inside of an electric auto as a much-enlarged HoloLens headset through which images are superimposed onto the real view of the real street view outside the vehicle.

Following several patent filings over the last decade, Apple had hired Doug Bowman, a leading VR researcher, to work on the project.

Apple’s latest acquisition in the area is Flyby Media – an augmented reality start-up that allows “mobile devices “see” the world around them”, the report says. However, during the investor call earlier this week, CEO Tim Cook had admitted that the technology was “really cool” and has “some interesting applications”.

Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin noted Apple’s propensity for owning the entire ecosystem, both hardware and software, as well as designing its own chips, would give them a leg up in designing a virtual or augmented reality product. The FT reports today (Jan. 29) that Apple bought Flyby Media, which works with smartphone-based 3D mapping.

TechTimes noted that the technology company has tapped the services of the computer science professor and the Virginia Tech Center for Human-Computer Interaction director to keep up with rival firms, which are also stepping up efforts in virtual reality. But this is the first time we’ve heard of Apple working on prototype headsets, probably not unlike the Facebook-branded Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Samsung Gear VR.

Last year Cook told The New Yorker that the company’s greater goal for wearable technology was to create something that “isn’t obnoxious” and that doesn’t create “a barrier between you and me”. The technologies for the imaging and positioning of the headset could also be used for its secret vehicle project. The secret team has already been fooling with some prototypes, according to the report, but their end goal remains fluid.