A Peek into Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two disciplines that are growing exponentially, with very interesting potential in the next couple of years. For this blog, I thought I would take a deeper look at what they are and how they are being used today.
To start, I am going to use their full names of virtual reality and augmented reality. The shortened VR and AR look extremely similar, and if you are like me, you flip the first letter 😖 and it is almost impossible to remember which is which. The names themselves also do a good job differentiating between the two.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality… completely take(s) over your vision to give you the impression that you’re somewhere else. -PCMag
Virtual reality is what you think of when you picture someone wearing a headset that completely covers their eyes, as in the above photo. The purpose of virtual reality is to completely take over your vision, and transport you to another place entirely. This can be used for gaming purposes, but also for 360-degree video. Headsets use motion tracking to keep track of where the user is facing as well as any movement they make. To achieve this immersive experience, virtual reality headsets completely cover the user’s eyes, and many sets have arm bands included to track body movement. There are a couple of retailers selling headsets for a range of prices. Price is usually determined by the quality of the images shown, as well as whether the set is wireless or not.
While virtual reality can create a realistically immersive experience, it is currently somewhat limited by the physical space of the user. For obvious reasons, it can be a bit dangerous to lose track of where you are, especially if you are moving around and where you are physically located contains things such as tables and glass… Headsets that have wires can also pose tripping hazards.
Despite the physical limitations of virtual reality, the experiences can be quite transporting, and the future will hopefully bring ways to sidestep the current physical limitations.
Devices:
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality takes in your current physical surroundings, and adds to them. The most popular usage of augmented reality is the game Pokemon Go, which uses your phone’s camera to capture your surroundings and then adds additional information to your screen so you can interact with different Pokemon in your own world.
Additionally, companies are now producing glasses the user can wear that are transparent, and can project images in front of your eyes, similar to the idea of a hologram. The glasses are still very much in the development phase, however, and tend to be quite expensive. They are currently being used in industrial settings within organizations mostly for training purposes. The majority of augmented reality experiences that are available to the general public tends to be interacted with through the screen of a smart phone.
The future of augmented reality is endless. From real time language translation to more realistic feeling virtual meetings while working remotely, there are endless possibilities to the benefits of slightly enhancing a current user’s reality, many of which we still have yet to imagine.
Devices:
Final Thoughts:
Both virtual reality and augmented reality provide fascinating speculations for future technology. The ability to fully immerse a user in a world, be it a video game a virtual store, a conference, or another human’s experience holds endless potential.
