We live in strange times. Tech giants around the globe are working overtime to bring about the next big revolution – Virtual Reality (VR). Consumers are being egged on to spend insane amounts of money to put on huge plastic visors such as the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR, so they can escape into a CGI-created virtual world.
For the past couple of years, Facebook’s Oculus has been at the forefront of this revolution. However, on the first day of its annual F8 developer conference, the tech firm’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed the script and made a renewed push for the Augmented Reality (AR) market, which, according to estimates, is expected to swell up to $117 billion by 2022.
But what is AR, and how does it differ from its more fancy sibling, Virtual Reality? The Quint explains.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented Reality (AR), a term that was coined in 1992 by researcher Tom Caudell, is a technology that enables the real-world experience to be supplemented by a virtual layer of data, which when executed correctly, creates content that blends in with the real world.
Too complicated, right? Here’s a simpler definition:
Augmented Reality enables users to interact with virtual content in the real world, while being able to distinguish between the two at all times. Remember Pokemon GO? That’s Augmented Reality.
Through a smartphone’s camera it simply augments our surroundings. That is what is being implemented in Pokemon GO, and Facebook’s recently announced Camera Effects Platform for developers.
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Gamooz is another interesting implementation of AR tech by an Indian company. Brainchild of a Gurgaon based startup, Gamooz uses AR to create interactive textbooks. The app takes advantage of the users phone to bring to life simple textbooks by adding a ton of extra multimedia content to it.
With a simple scan, users can unlock related information in form of videos and images about the topic they are researching on. However, the app is in a nascent stage and as such is bottle-necked by its limited number of partners.
Imaginate is another company that is fast making a name for itself in the AR/VR space. Imaginate has a number of AR/VR based apps to its credit, with most of its products aimed for specific clients.
From ShootAR – an Augmented Reality simulator developed for the Indian Army – to LiveVR that helps doctors navigate complicated open liver surgeries, the company has been making serious strides in the Augmented Reality space.
Source: The Quint