The Cutting Edge of Augmented Reality is a blog about the future of augmented reality.
Augmented reality is an interactive experience where the real world meets the digital. It’s when what you see through your eyes is enhanced by what you see on your phone or through a pair of glasses. Imagine having step-by-step instructions floating in front of your eyes while you build a piece of furniture, or seeing a 3D model of a building superimposed on the real thing during construction. In some cases, it might just be about adding filters to your camera so you can take better pictures and videos, but in other cases it could be much more.
Augmented reality is one way to think about the future of computing, along with virtual reality and mixed reality. We believe that augmented reality will be huge, eventually changing how we shop, learn and communicate with each other. There’s still a lot we don’t know about this technology and where it’s going, but that’s what makes it fun!
The Cutting Edge of Augmented Reality is a blog about the future of augmented reality and its impact on the way we live, learn, play and do business.
The blog is written by Paul James, head of new product development at Proxama and a leader in the AR industry.
You are reading a blog about the future of augmented reality.
Augmented reality is different from virtual reality. Virtual reality is the simulation of a real life experience, while augmented reality is enhancing real life with virtual elements.
To understand the difference between augmented and virtual reality let me give you an example. Assume you are in your living room, wearing a connected pair of glasses that allows you to see additional information overlaying your real world view. If you look at your couch, you might see some statistics about its origin and manufacturing process. Looking at your TV might display additional information about the show you are currently watching and provide related content via links or pop-ups. You could even see additional information about your family members, friends or business partners when they come over for a visit. This would be an application of augmented reality.
Now assume that instead of getting augmented information to enhance your real life experience, you can use the same glasses to transport yourself into a different world; to experience events and scenes as if you were there in person – almost like magic! While this might sound like science fiction today, it will not be far from our reach within ten years. This would be an application of virtual reality.”
Augmented reality is at the cutting edge of innovation, and is already playing a major role in transforming our lives. At the cutting edge of augmented reality, there are many important questions that we must address: How do we take advantage of the latest technologies? What are the best techniques and applications? How can augmented reality be used to improve our lives and our world?
We’ll be exploring these questions in this blog. We’ll also be sharing our thoughts on how the technology works and what it means for society. Our goal is to provide an informed perspective on this rapidly developing field.
Augmented reality describes technology that overlays computer-generated images and sounds on top of the real world. The most popular application is Google Glass, which displays directions and notifications on a small screen above your eye. But augmented reality could be much more exciting than that.
Augmented reality can help you see things you normally can’t. You could use it to see heat or electromagnetic fields, or to see through walls and other obstacles. You could use it to see the future: flying cars, space elevators, marketing messages. And you could use it to see people’s thoughts, feelings and intentions, at least if you’re OK with something a little creepy.
There are lots of ways to implement augmented reality, but the one I’m most excited about is using contact lenses which are transparent except for tiny embedded cameras and screens, like this:
Augmented reality will be the next frontier of interactive computing. It’s going to change the way we communicate, shop, and learn. In this blog I will highlight some of the cutting edge companies and technologies that are driving forward this exciting new technology.
An augmented reality device is defined as one which overlays information on top of your real-world view. This can be done in a number of ways. The most common is to use a video see-through system, where a camera is mounted on the front of a pair of glasses or goggles and displays a computer generated image over what you’re seeing in real life. A head-mounted display has many advantages over a hand-held device because it provides an unobstructed view of the world around you. And it allows for hands free interaction, which is important when you’re trying to operate machinery or use tools.
A head-mounted display can also provide much more information than a hand-held device because it has access to all parts of your visual field. For example, if you’re trying to diagnose a car engine problem, you might be interested in seeing what’s under the hood as well as what’s on top of it (and even under the car). With traditional diagnostic tools like thermal imaging cameras, you’d
The next stage of augmented reality is to use a wearable computer system as a heads up display. To do this, you need to be able to see the real world while simultaneously seeing virtual objects overlayed on top of the real world.
There are two approaches:
Use a see-through display. This involves wearing special goggles or glasses that have transparent screens in front of your eyes. These screens project the image that you would normally see on your computer monitor, but superimpose them over the real world. You can then interact with the virtual objects using special gloves or some other type of input device.
Use a video camera mounted on your head that projects onto a computer screen in front of you, and then wears special glasses (like 3D glasses) that will block out the real world and only let you see the computer screen. This type of augmented reality is harder to implement because it requires better tracking technology to keep track of where in the real world you are looking at any given time.
It’s probably not hard to see which one of these solutions is easier to implement right now. The second one is much more complicated and will require significant advances in tracking technology before it is actually useful for anything other than simple games like 3D Pong (which admittedly would