Introduction to Virtual and Augmented Reality
Virtual and augmented reality appear to be on everybody’s lips nowadays, each promising to revamp the tech scene and alter the way in which consumers interact within the digital space. Despite the hype and media attention, the 2 often get confused as some people use the terms interchangeably. While there are various similarities between virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), the 2 are definitely distinguishable.
What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual reality is a computer-simulated reality during which a user can interact with replicated real or imaginary environments. The experience is completely immersive via visual, auditive, and haptic (touch) stimulation, so the constructed reality is nearly indistinguishable from the true deal. You’re completely inside it.
The idea of an alternate simulated reality took off within the late ’80s and early ’90s, a time when notebook computer development exploded and a number of people became enthusiastic about what technology had to supply. These attempts, just like the disastrous Nintendo Virtual Boy, which shut down after just one yr, were marked by failure after failure, so everyone looked as if it would lose faith in VR.
Then got here Palmer Luckey, who’s undoubtedly the daddy of up to date VR due to his Oculus Rift. Luckey built his first prototype in 2011, when he was barely 18, and quickly raised $2 million with Kickstarter. In 2014, Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Other popular VR headsets include Samsung Gear VR or Google Cardboard.
What is Augmented Reality?
While VR completely immerses the user in a simulated reality, AR blends the virtual and real. Like VR, an AR experience typically involves some type of goggles through which you’ll be able to view a physical reality whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input resembling sound, video, graphics, or GPS data. In augmented reality, the true and the non-real or virtual may be easily told apart.
Wearing Google Glass — the most important effort an organization ever made to bring AR to mass consumers — you possibly can walk through a conference hall and see things ‘pop to life’ across the booths, resembling animated 3D graphics of an architecture model if the technology is supported. The goggles aren’t even vital since you possibly can do that via mobile apps which use a smartphone’s or tablet’s camera to scan the environment while augmented elements will show on the display.
Perhaps essentially the most revealing example of AR is Pokemon Go, a viral phenomenon that amassed greater than 100 million downloads in a couple of weeks. In Pokemon Go, you utilize your smartphone to seek out pokemons lurking in your vicinity with the assistance of a map that’s built based in your real-life GPS signal. To catch the pokemon, you will have to throw a pokeball at it by swiping in your mobile’s screen, and if you toggle AR on, you possibly can see the pokemon with the true world within the background.
Key Differences Between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Both technologies enrich the experience of a user by offering deeper layers of interactions and have the potential to rework how people engage with technology. However, the 2 stand apart because:
- Virtual reality creates a very recent environment that is totally computer-generated. Augmented reality, alternatively, enhances experiences through digital implies that offer a brand new layer of interaction with reality, but doesn’t seek to exchange it.
- AR offers a limited field of view, while VR is completely immersive.
- Another approach to have a look at it’s that after you strap those VR goggles, you’re essentially disconnected from the surface world. Unlike VR, an AR user is always aware of the physical surroundings while actively engaged with simulated ones.
- Virtual reality typically requires a headed mount resembling the Oculus Rift goggles, while augmented reality is much less demanding — you simply need a smartphone or tablet.
What’s Mixed Reality?
We just made things pretty clear on what VR and AR are and where the boundary between the 2 lies. Following innovation within the two fields, a 3rd distinct medium has surfaced: mixed reality (MR). What MR does is mix one of the best of augmented and virtual reality to create a hybrid reality. Mixed reality overlays synthetic content over the true world, and the virtual content and the real-world content are capable of react to 1 one other in real time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, virtual reality and augmented reality are two distinct technologies which can be changing the way in which we interact with the digital world. While they share some similarities, they’ve distinct differences by way of their approach to simulating reality. Virtual reality creates a very recent environment, while augmented reality enhances existing reality with digital information. Mixed reality, a more recent technology, combines one of the best of each worlds to create a hybrid reality. As these technologies proceed to evolve, we will expect to see recent and modern applications in various fields, from entertainment to education and beyond. With the worldwide marketplace for each virtual reality and AR expected to achieve greater than $105 billion by 2020, it’s an exciting time for these technologies, and we will’t wait to see what the long run holds.
