We spend a lot of time looking at screens these days. Computers, smartphones, and televisions have all become a big part of our lives; they're how we get a lot of our news, use social media, watch movies, and much more. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two technologies that are changing the way we use screens, creating new and exciting interactive experiences.
Virtual reality uses a headset to place you in a computer-generated world that you can explore. Augmented reality, on the other hand, is a bit different. Instead of transporting you to a virtual world, it takes digital images and layers them on the real world around you through the use of either a clear visor or smartphone.
With virtual reality, you could explore an underwater environment. With augmented reality, you could see fish swimming through the world around you.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality immerses you in a virtual world through the use of a headset with some type of screen displaying a virtual environment. These headsets also use a technology called head tracking, which allows you to look around the environment by physically moving your head. The display will follow whichever direction you move, giving you a 360-degree view of the virtual environment.
Augmented reality
Augmented reality allows you to see the world around you with digital images layered on top of it. There are currently a couple of AR headsets available, including the Microsoft HoloLens and the Magic Leap. However, they are currently more expensive than VR headsets, and are marketed primarily to businesses.
Augmented reality can also be used on devices like smartphones and laptops without the use of a headset. There are a variety of apps that use AR, including some that allow you to translate text using your camera, identify stars in the sky, and even see how your garden would look with different plants. You may have even previously used AR without realizing it, while playing a game like Pokemon Go or using filters on Snapchat.
The differences between AR and VR
While both technologies involve simulated reality, AR and VR rely on different underlying components and generally serve different audiences.
In virtual reality, the user almost always wears an eye-covering headset and headphones to completely replace the real world with the virtual one. The idea of VR is to eliminate the real world as much as possible and insulate the user from it. Once inside, the VR universe can be coded to provide just about anything, ranging from a light saber battle with Darth Vader to a realistic (yet wholly invented) recreation of earth. While VR has some business applications in product design, training, architecture and retail, today the majority of VR applications are built around entertainment, especially gaming.
Augmented reality, on the other hand, integrates the simulated world with the real one. In most applications the user relies on a smartphone or tablet screen to accomplish this, aiming the phone’s camera at a point of interest, and generating a live-streaming video of that scene on the screen. The screen is then overlaid with helpful information, which includes implementations such as repair instructions, navigation information or diagnostic data.
However, AR can also be used in entertainment applications. The mobile game Pokemon Go, in which players attempt to capture virtual creatures while moving around in the real world, is a classic example.
- Ikea Place is a mobile app that allows you to envision Ikea furniture in your own home, by overlaying a 3D representation of the piece atop a live video stream of your room.
- YouCam Makeup lets users virtually try on real-life cosmetics via a living selfie.
- Repair technicians can don a headset that walks them through the steps of fixing or maintaining a broken piece of equipment, diagramming exactly where each part goes and the order in which to do things.
- Various sports are relying on augmented reality to provide real-time statistics and improve physical training for athletes.
- Architects are using VR to design homes — and let clients “walk through” before the foundation has ever been laid.
- Automobiles and other vehicles are increasingly being designed in VR.
- Firefighters, soldiers and other workers in hazardous environments are using VR to train without putting themselves at risk.
- Limited mobile processing capability – Mobile handsets have limited processing power, but tethering a user to a desktop or server isn’t realistic. Either mobile processing power will have to expand, or the work will have to be offloaded to the cloud.
- Limited mobile bandwidth – While cloud-based processing offers a compelling potential solution to the mobile processing bottleneck, mobile phone bandwidth is still too slow in most places to offer the necessary real-time video processing. This will likely change as mobile bandwidth improves.
- Complex development – Designing an AR or VR application is costly and complicated. Development tools will need to become more user-friendly to make these technologies accessible to programmers.
- VR hardware’s inconvenience – Putting on a virtual reality headset and clearing a room often detracts from the user experience. VR input devices, in the form of modified gaming controllers, can also often be unintuitive, with a steep learning curve.
- Building a business model – Outside of video gaming, many AR and VR applications remain in early stages of development with unproven viability in the business world.
- Security and privacy issues – The backlash over the original Google Glass proved that the mainstream remains skeptical about the proliferation of cameras and their privacy implications. How are video feeds secured, and are copies stored somewhere?
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