Augmented & Virtual Reality

Augmented reality is the integration of digital information with the user's environment in real time. Unlike virtual reality, which creates a totally artificial environment, augmented reality uses the existing environment and overlays new information on top of it. One of the first commercial applications of AR technology was the yellow "first down" line that began appearing in televised football games sometime in 1998. Today, Google glass and heads-up displays in car windshields are perhaps the most well-known consumer AR products, but the technology is used in many industries including healthcare, public safety, gas and oil, tourism and marketing. Augmented reality apps are written in special 3D programs that allow the developer to tie animation or contextual digital information in the computer program to an augmented reality "marker" in the real world. When a computing device's AR app or browser plug-in receives digital information from a known marker, it begins to execute the marker's code and layer the correct image or images.

Virtual Reality (VR) is the use of computer technology to create a simulated environment. Unlike traditional user interfaces, VR places the user inside an experience. Instead of viewing a screen in front of them, users are immersed and able to interact with 3D worlds. By simulating as many senses as possible, such as vision, hearing, touch, even smell, the computer is transformed into a gatekeeper to this artificial world. The only limits to near-real VR experiences are the availability of content and cheap computing power. Virtual Reality’s most immediately-recognizable component is the head-mounted display (HMD). Human beings are visual creatures, and display technology is often the single biggest difference between immersive Virtual Reality systems and traditional user interfaces. For instance, CAVE automatic virtual environments actively display virtual content onto room-sized screens. While they are fun for people in universities and big labs, consumer and industrial wearables are the wild west.

How Augmented Reality works?

The idea of augmented reality is to superimpose graphics, audio and other sensory enhancements over a real-world environment in real time. Sounds pretty simple. Besides, haven't television networks been doing that with graphics for decades? However, augmented reality is more advanced than any technology you've seen in television broadcasts, although some new TV effects come close, such as RACEf/x and the super-imposed first down line on televised U.S. football games, both created by Sportvision.

1. Marker Based Augmented Reality

Marker-based augmented reality uses a camera and some type of visual marker, such as a QR/2D code, to produce a result only when the marker is sensed by a reader. Marker based applications use a camera on the device to distinguish a marker from any other real world object. Distinct, but simple patterns are used as the markers, because they can be easily recognized and do not require a lot of processing power to read. The position and orientation is also calculated, in which some type of content and information is then overlaied the marker.

2.Markerless Augmented Reality

As one of the most widely implemented applications of augmented reality, markerless (also called location-based, position-based, or GPS) augmented reality, uses a GPS, digital compass, velocity meter, or accelerometer which is embedded in the device to provide data based on your location. A strong force behind markerless augmented reality technology is the wide availability of smartphones and location detection features they provide. It is most commonly used for mapping directions, finding nearby businesses, and other location-centric mobile applications.

3.PROJECTSion Based Augmented Reality

PROJECTSion based augmented reality works by PROJECTSing artificial light onto real world surfaces. PROJECTSion based augmented reality applications allow for human interaction by sending light onto a real world surface and then sensing the human interaction (i.e. touch) of that PROJECTSed light. Detecting the user’s interaction is done by differentiating between an expected (or known) PROJECTSion and the altered PROJECTSion (caused by the user’s interaction). Another interesting application of PROJECTSion based augmented reality utilizes laser plasma technology to PROJECTSa three-dimensional (3D) interactive holograminto mid-air.

4.Superimposition Based Augmented reality

Superimposition based augmented reality either partially or fully replaces the original view of an object with a newly augmented view of that same object. In superimposition based augmented reality, object recognition plays a vital role because the application cannot replace the original view with an augmented one if it cannot determine what the object is. A strong consumer-facing example of superimposition based augmented reality could be found in the Ikea augmented reality furniture catalogue. By downloading an app and scanning selected pages in their printed or digital catalogue, users can place virtual ikea furniture in their own home with the help of augmented reality.

How Virtual Reality Works?

Unsurprisingly, the video games industry is one of the largest proponents of Virtual Reality. Support for the Oculus Rift headsets has already been jerry-rigged into games like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto, but newer games like Elite: Dangerous come with headset support built right in. Many tried-and-true user interface metaphors in gaming have to be adjusted for VR (after all, who wants to have to pick items out of a menu that takes up your entire field of vision?), but the industry has been quick to adapt as the hardware for true Virtual Reality gaming has become more widely available. and Scientific and engineering data visualization has benefited for years from Virtual Reality, although recent innovation in display technology has generated interest in everything from molecular visualization to architecture to weather models

1. Fully immersive

The complete VR experience, we need three things. First, a plausible, and richly detailed virtual world to explore a computer model or simulation, in other words. Second, a powerful computer that can detect what we're going and adjust our experience accordingly, in real time (so what we see or hear changes as fast as we move just like in real reality). Third,hardware linked to the computer that fully immerses us in the virtual world as we roam around. Usually, we'd need to put on what's called a head-mounted display with two screens and stereo sound, and wear one or more sensory gloves. Alternatively, we could move around inside a room, fitted out with surround-sound loudspeakers, onto which changing images are PROJECTSed from outside.We'll explore VR equipment in more detail in a moment.

2. Non-Immersive:

A highly realistic flight simulator on a home PC might qualify as nonimmersive virtual reality, especially if it uses a very wide screen, with headphones or surround sound, and a realistic joystick and other controls. Not everyone wants or needs to be fully immersed in an alternative reality. An architect might build a detailed 3D model of a new building to show to clients that can be explored on a desktop computer by moving a mouse. Most people would classify that as a kind of virtual reality, even if it doesn't fully immerse you. In the same way, computer archaeologists often create engaging 3D reconstructions of long-lost settlements that you can move around and explore.

3.Collaborative

virtual world games like Second Life and Minecraft? Do they count as virtual reality? Although they meet the first four of our criteria (believable, interactive, computer-created and explorable), they don't really meet the fifth: they don't fully immerse you. But one thing they do offer that cutting-edge VR typically doesn't is collaboration: the idea of sharing an experience in a virtual world with other people, often in real time or something very close to it. Collaboration and sharing are likely to become increasingly important features of VR in future.

4.Web-Based

Virtual reality was one of the hottest, fastest-growing technologies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the rapid rise of the World Wide Web largely killed off interest after that. Even though computer scientists developed a way of building virtual worlds on the Web (using a technology analogous to HTML called Virtual Reality Markup Language,VRML) ordinary people were much more interested in the way the Web gave them new ways to access real reality—new ways to find and publish information, shop, and share thoughts, ideas, and experiences with friends through social media. With Facebook's growing interest in the technology, the future of VR seems likely to be both Web-based and collaborative.

5.Augmented reality

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have put what used to be supercomputer power in our hands and pockets. If we're wandering round the world, maybe visiting a heritage site like the pyramids or a fascinating foreign city we've never been to before, what we want is typically not virtual reality but an enhanced experience of the exciting reality we can see in front of us. That's spawned the idea of augmented reality (AR), where, for example, you point your smartphone at a landmark or a striking building and interesting information about it pops up automatically.

Difference Between AR and VR

Virtual reality and augmented reality accomplish two very different things in two very different ways, despite the similar designs of the devices themselves. VR replaces reality, taking you somewhere else. AR adds to reality, PROJECTSing information on top of what you're already seeing. They're both powerful technologies that have yet to make their mark with consumers, but show a lot of promise. They can completely change how we use computers in the future, but whether one or both will succeed is anyone's guess right now.