Snap unveiled “Snapchat Winter Village,” a festive AR shopping world

Executive summary

Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse and spatial computing. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:

• Top stories: Snap unveiled “Snapchat Winter Village,” a festive AR shopping world.

• Event: We are hosting an event on 15 January in London, based around VR films! Come along if you wish; and if you are well-suited to speak, please email tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.

• This week’s stories: Alibaba has launched its $537 Quark S1 smart glasses, integrating its Qwen AI to deliver on-lens contextual information, translation, meeting notes, and visual search linked to Taobao (more below).

Top stories

Snap unveiled “Snapchat Winter Village,” a festive AR shopping world.

• What is it? It’s an immersive space that brings three luxury brands into a single immersive digital space: Chopard, BOSS and Lancôme. It is enterable via AR lenses.

This week’s stories

• Alibaba has launched its $537 Quark S1 smart glasses, integrating its Qwen AI to deliver on-lens contextual information, translation, meeting notes, and visual search linked to Taobao.

• The German Roentgen Society has integrated virtual reality into its annual FFF Technik course to deliver more interactive, engaging training on radiation protection and imaging technology for radiology professionals.

• New York City is launching two Smart City Testbed pilots that use augmented reality and pedestrian-activity analysis to improve street safety, infrastructure planning, and community engagement ahead of larger-scale deployment.

• Pinnacle Solutions has won a USD $369 million U.S. Air Force contract to deliver T-7A maintenance training systems using its Virtual X Training platform, which integrates high-fidelity models with VR, AR, and haptics for immersive instruction.

• Shoei and EyeLights have launched the GT-Air 3 Smart, a motorcycle helmet with a fully integrated augmented-reality head-up display that gives riders navigation and speed information without external hardware.

• Snke OS GmbH has launched SnkeXR, a medical-grade AR glasses platform that brings real-time anatomical guidance and surgical tracking into clinical workflows while enabling partners to build custom medical applications.

Note: The Immersive Wire is run by Tom Ffiske, who also works at Accenture. The contents of the newsletter should not be regarded as Accenture’s views.

All spelling mistakes are deliberate, actually.