What is AR and how does it differ from virtual reality?
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Virtual reality and augmented reality.
They kinda sound like something you need a drug counselor to get through, don't they?
But in fact, they're the hottest two technologies going these days.
Let's learn about them so we can compare and contrast what each of them does.
So they wow you instead of overwhelm you.
AUGMENTED REALITY is when you look at the real world but it's augmented with additional information or graphics in your view.
Now key to this AR concept is that the things are indexed to a location.
That means they occupy a relevant place in your view, as opposed to moving with your gaze as you turn your head.
And in many cases, you can interact with those Visuals that are augmenting your view.
AR can be had via a phone and one of the many AR apps out there.
Or for higher performance, you use dedicated AR glasses.
Know that AR is increasingly being referred to these days as MR.
Mixed reality.
It's part marketing term and part acknowledgement of AR's ability to augment the real world while also bringing in unreal elements.
Glasses that augment your view without being indexed to a location in space Are better referred to as connected head-up displays.
Now, Google Glass was the infamous standard bearer of that sector, but more recently, Vuzix has shown their pending Blade, an impressive set of head-mounted displays that include integration of Amazon Alexa to help you drive what's displayed by a voice.
Virtual reality is when the world you're standing in is replaced with a virtual one, with some of these.
Everything you see, and everything you hear, is replaced with something computer generated.
Now the world that that takes, Takes you to can be very naturalistic, actually.
Or extremely synthetic and fantastic.
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VR, you're surrounded in 360 degrees and the space is three dimensional.
Now in its most ambitious forms, VR places are also navigable as you can move through them.
And use your hands to manipulate things within them.
VR can be done as simply as sticking your phone in a literally cardboard head mount or a little more upgraded plastic holder.
But the attention these days is mostly on real deal head-mounted displays.
Until recently these were quite cumbersome and always tethered to either a game console or a high performance PC.
But more recent versions acknowledge that tethering is gonna be a non-starter for a lot of users.
And instead the new headsets build the electronics into themselves, or maybe into a small companion processor you wear on your belt for a pseudo cordless experience.
The bottom line on AR or VR is it you really have to experience it to understand it and appreciate it.
It's very hard to read an article look at a video like this.
And understanding the impact of these.
They aren't like a lot of other technologies.
The good news is you got plenty of time both of these are pretty green and have a long way to go.
Before they hopefully merge into a pretty smooth continuum of abilities.
Whereas right now it can be a little hard for the average user to knit them together, let alone find a use case that makes sense to them.
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