If you are still one of those who
Have you ever wondered what the whole fuss about Augmented Reality – AR and Virtual Reality – VR truly is? Is it impacting your life? Let’s try and understand.
According to howstuffworks.com, Augmented reality is the blending of interactive digital elements – like dazzling visual overlays, buzzy haptic feedback, or other sensory projections – into our real-world environments. If you experienced the hubbub of Pokemon Go, you witnessed augmented reality in action Augmented Reality (AR).
Unlike Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality needs additional equipment like VR Glasses for the experience. This is the Wikipedia definition of VR:
“Virtual reality (VR) is an interactive computer-generated experience taking place within a simulated environment. It incorporates mainly auditory and visual feedback, but may also allow other types of sensory feedback like haptic.“
In the world of ever evolving technology AR and VR have been buzzwords for a while now. But, contrary to popular belief, AR has been around for at least 30 years. Like the internet (read ARPANET), AR was initially developed in the military aircraft arena, with Pilot Head-Mounted Displays and flight simulations.
In a recent report by Techcrunch, Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology are putting fish in AR tanks. In order to test the “Station Keeping” function of the glass knifefish, researchers had created an AR system that tricks the animal’s electric sensing organ in real time.
The experiment proves that by using Augmented Reality researchers can conduct similar experiments to learn more about vision in humans, which could give us valuable knowledge about our own neurobiology.
You can read about the full experiment here:
Where are we heading in terms of AR and VR?
Almost a decade ago when the 1st smartphones hit the market, it changed the way we interact with the world. Here is the graph that shows smartphone penetration from 2014-19. Pokemon Go is the first validation of consumer-centric AR application on a smartphone.
The Global Augmented Reality Market is expected to register a CAGR of 5.37%, during the forecast period, 2018 -2025.
Among the industries looking to ride this wave, the Travel and Tourism industry is definitely one of them. As per a study, 84% of the consumers all over the world would be interested to include AR in their travel experiences and almost 42% of tourists believe AR is the future of tourism.
Some of the applications of AR in travel would be apps that help plan trips – where to go, what to eat, and a tentative suggested itinerary for new places. It would allow visitors to overlay skin on skeletons and even bring alive species from a prehistoric era at museums To accentuate this experience even further, Virtual Reality could be introduced in these spaces. Thereby enhancing the experience and making it far more immersive through 3D visuals. This, coupled with MR or Mixed Reality that is literally technology that aids digital interaction with the real world. MR has already found its use in the following areas:
MR can be used to train pilots without extracting the engine out of the aircraft. A holographic image of the engine can be projected on special headsets to understand the engine in-depth.
Another one looking to benefit from AR hugely is real estate. It is rather anticipated to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of AR. As many as 51% of consumers put off their plans for renovation of their homes because they can’t visualize what the finished product would look like.
Fashion is another such area that will transmute with the advancement of AR. In a piece of recent news, Warby Parker (a leading brand of eye gear) introduced AR in their app allowing users to try the frames before taking a decision.
With AR tools, customers will be able to see what clothes would look good on them, what colour, design or size would suit their personality. Instead of seeing the clothes on models and mannequin, the customer will be able to see themselves in all the outfits and thereby make a more sound decision. Customers will be more engaged with these applications and eventually, it will increase the sales of the online clothing store.
So, with this, we hope you feel a little more in sync with times. AR’s offering is limitless and possibly unfathomable for us sitting in our office spaces. But we do hope you can find a fitting use for it in your personal space and enhance your everyday experience.