The tech world of augmented and virtual reality has been rife with rumors and a lot of confusion surrounding it. These two technologies are garnering a lot of attention, courtesy its burgeoning growth. What exactly separates virtual reality from augmented reality?
Virtual reality also known as VR is deemed as an artificial and computer-generated simulation or recreation of a specific real life situation or reality. It engrosses the user by making them feel like they are experiencing everything in reality, first hand, chiefly by enhancing or stimulating their vision and hearing.
VR technology comes into action by wearing a headset like Facebook’s Oculus equipped with the technology, it is used for two predominant reasons:
- Enabling the creation and enhancement of an imaginary reality for the purpose of gaming, entertainment, and play. It could usually be used for video and computer games, or 3D movies, and even the head mounted display.
- VR also helps in training for situations in real life by creating stimulations that helps in real-time practice. For instance, flight simulators for pilots.
Virtual reality comes into existence through the aid of a coding language known as VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language). The languages help in the creation of a series of images, and highlights what kind of interaction is feasible for them.
The mention of augmented reality is incomplete without it is close cousin virtual reality.
VR would let you drown in your senses completely in world that is a sole creation and existence of the digital sphere, augmented reality joins hands by taking a piece of the real world and garnishes it with digital imagery and sound. Augmented and virtual reality is both a part of the medium of mediated reality. The primary role of the computer is to alter our version of reality versus the “real” world.
This leads us to the deduction of the ruling of augmented reality in numerous things. The heads up displays that you view in a lot of aircrafts and vehicular services that show you ‘distance to target’, GPS positioning, are all a version of augmented reality. The events showcasing the digital avatars of dead artistes – Michael Jackson and Tupac Shakur were demonstrated on the screen by taking a leaf out of the Pepper’s Ghost illusion – this also comes under the family tree of augmented reality.
AR technology has swiftly taken a positioning into the mainstream arena. It is now being used in the works of score displays in sports games and 3D emails pop ups, pictures or even the text messages on mobile devices. Biggies of the tech world are incorporating AR to do breakthrough deals with holograms and motion activated commands.
Augmented reality and virtual reality are flip sides of a coin working towards to provide supreme experience to the end user. Virtual reality offers a palate of digital recreation and modification of a real life setting, on the other hand, augmented reality will provide you with the deliverables of virtual elements as a path to the real world.
Now, when we discuss about augmented reality, it usually hints out a much more defined, spatial and interactive execution of this advanced concept. This helps us feel the environment we are in, only that the environment in digital is not real. It happens via 3D models.
Augmented and virtual realities both capitalize almost from the same kind of technologies; they both work in unison to provide the user with a more profound and enriched experience.
These realities are coming into age with the new era and are the most sought after choice in the entertainment domain. It might have happened in the past that these subjects seemed like a part of a fictional world, but now new artificial takes shape of life under the user control and the enhancement and the interaction with the real world is also attained. Tech giants are investing in the development of new adaptations and releasing new improvements of add ons in the products and apps, so the technology serves better to the end consumer.
Moreover, both the realities have an untapped potential in drastically improving the medical world by remodeling the industry, remote surgeries becoming a possibility. AR and VR have already worked wonders in treating the patients of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Projection mapping being used as an augmented reality method comes with a lot of hope, but it demands controlled and well-defined mapped space, so as to work in finesse. One method that can easily surpass the smartphone augmented reality as a common implementation outside the realm of the laboratory is one that incorporates the head mounted systems. This is the convergence point where virtual and augmented reality really begin to meet as there is no other possibility as to why the head mounted systems implemented by both the technologies could not be cross-functional. In fact, there are many head mounted systems that benefit from the smartphones oftentimes as they have a camera “pass-through”. This phrasing means that you obviously cannot view anything other than the screen which is placed on the head mounted display; it can very clearly show you the outside world with the help of the rear-facing camera of the phone. It is a great way to milk the merits of the augmented reality without ever needing a handheld device. It has a flip side, too, the experience leaves the user with a feeling of certain disconnect from the experience; all because the perspective of the cameras and an absence of the depth perception aren’t exactly friendly to the naked eyes.
Written by : Digvijay Singh Ponia, Product Manger, Hallwaze
