Augmented reality (AR) uses the camera of a smartphone to overlay digital elements to a live scene. Virtual reality (VR) refers to a completely immersive experience that isolates the user from the outside world.
The buzzwords of the moment are virtual reality and augmented reality. What’s the difference between them, though? Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-generated simulation or replacement of one’s physical surroundings. Virtual Reality is made up of two words: virtual, which means not real, and reality, which means true.
When you put on a headset, it blocks out your surroundings and replaces them with a digital environment designed to deceive your senses. From your brain’s perspective, you are somewhere else, but in actuality or physically, you are only here.
Augmented reality is when a person’s real surroundings are enhanced or augmented by computer-generated pictures that are usually motion-tracked. You’ve already used basic types of augmented reality if you’ve played Pokémon Go or used Snapchat lens face filters.
Thomas Corder, a former Boeing researcher, coined the phrase “augmented reality” in 1990. Augment comes from the Latin term augment, which meaning “to add” or “to increase.” As a result, AR Technology augments our current reality.
Applications
There are numerous possible applications of augmented reality, from gaming and entertainment to medicine, education and business.
- Archaeology – AR has been used to assist archaeological research. By augmenting archaeological features onto the modern landscape, AR allows archaeologists to formulate possible site configurations from existing structures.
- Architecture– AR can aid in visualizing building projects. Computer-generated images of a structure can be superimposed or placed onto a real-life local view of a property before the physical building is constructed there.
- Education – Text, graphics, video, and audio may be superimposed into a student’s real-time environment. As AR evolves, students can participate in interactively and interact with knowledge more authentically. For example, anatomy students can visualise different organs of the human body in three dimensions.
- Visual Art – AR applied in the visual arts allows objects or places to trigger artistic multidimensional experiences and interpretations of reality.
- Video Games – Augmented reality allowed video game players to experience digital gameplay in a real-world environment. The gaming industry embraced AR technology. A number of games were developed for prepared indoor environments, such as AR air hockey, collaborative combat against virtual enemies, and AR-enhanced pool table games.
- Spatial immersion and interaction – AR Technology can also digitize human presence in space and provide a computer-generated model of them, in a virtual space where they can interact and perform various tasks.
- Military – AR can be very effective to virtually design out the 3D topologies of munition(arms and ammunitions) storages in the terrain with the choice of the munitions combination in stacks and distances between them with a visualization of risk areas.
- Industrial Design – AR allows industrial designers to experience a product’s design and operation before completion.
Risks in AR Technology
- Reality Modification – Although this could be a nightmare for many firms that fail to grab consumers’ imaginations, it also raises the possibility that people using augmented reality glasses will be unaware of the risks around them.
- Privacy Concerns – The ability of modern AR technologies to record and analyze the surroundings in real-time is dependent on the device. As a result, there could be legal concerns about privacy. In terms of individual privacy, there is the ease of access to information about a person that should not be easily available.
Difference between VR and AR Technologies
- Virtual Reality is designed to be entirely immersive, with no real-world stimuli interfering with the user’s experience. Its primary purpose is to make the user feel as if they are in another location. Augmented reality, on the other hand, functions as a digital addition to the user’s world.
- The thing that sets AR and VR apart from other types of technology is that it has a direct impact on the human mind’s perceptions and processes because it is the only technology that can deliver true packed experiences.
- While many people believe that AR and VR will fade away like earlier forms of technology in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s important to remember that the underlying technology is far more powerful this time around, and it’s very much doable.
- By 2025, beautiful augmented reality experiences will be commonplace if current trends continue. If properly implemented, this technique has enormous promise.
