Augmented and virtual realities are one of the fastest-growing directions in the technological space. The interest has exceeded expectations, with tons of money flowing into the market and new startups popping up like mushrooms after heavy rain. Although so, the adoption rate of the technology is nothing near to what was expected.
Virtual Reality first made its appearance in the gaming industry, but high prices, bad resolution, and bad UX hindered its broad adoption.
Slowly, the industry’s focus shifted from everyday use-cases to applications in medical, educational, and working sectors. Innovative and creative people quickly appeared worldwide to adopt the potential of virtual reality and bring it into our lives. But, when does the story of this technology start, and what are its main challenges today?
Everything starts with a virtual cube
Virtual reality headsets became available on the market in 2012, but its history goes back for decades.
As it often happens, the idea of this technology first appeared in fiction. Enhancing experiences of a game was the core idea of 1935 science fiction Pigmallion’s spectacles. After about 25 years from the writing of the story, the first real prototype was born.
Contrary to the comfortable, light-weight spectacles described in the story, the real prototype of virtual (more precisely, augmented) reality was so heavy and rough it had to be hung on the ceiling. In the video above, we see a 3D simulation of a cube that the device’s wearer saw. This was our first step into the virtual realm, but the road towards fully absorbing its capabilities turned out much harder than expected.
In 1990, the researchers dropped the project. The technology back then wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as needed for making the technology accessible for the masses.
Second Wave
Then the smartphones appeared. We can think of them as one of the most significant achievements in the history of technology. The processors became smaller while their processing power stayed the same. Screen resolution was significantly improved, so the technological barriers for virtual reality weren’t so much of barriers anymore.
Oculus presented the modern prototype of virtual reality headsets in 2012. After that, everything happened quickly: they raised $2 Million on Kickstarter, and, in 2014, Facebook acquiredthem for $2 Billion. Oculus is one of the most popular virtual reality headsets provider up until today.
The technology quickly became popular, and it wasn’t long until many startups appeared, joined by big companies fighting for the first place. But, the fact still stays the same: in 2020, we haven’t seen the projected virtual reality adoption.
Mark Zuckerberg hoped that Oculus would have one billion users soon. According to the statistics, in 2018, the amount of active VR users worldwide was 171 Million. At the same year’s conference, Mark spoke openly about the topic:
“We have a saying at Facebook that the road is 1% covered – In this case, we’re not even close.”
Today it is thought that the adoption of Augmented and virtual realities will happen faster in the work, medical, and educational environments than in the everyday lives of people. Even so, the technology still has a long road to cover.
Let’s give everything its name
The more sophisticated the different types of virtual reality becomes, the bigger the confusion around it. This led to the adoption of new terminology on the market not to get confused.
Extended reality (XR) refers to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables. Today we have three main directions: Augmented reality (AR), Virtual reality (VR), and Mixed reality (MR).
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality stands for the technology that overlays virtual elements on top of the real world. This is the most affordable form of extended reality, and today anyone can create an AR app if they want to. One of the platforms to use in Unity, and to demonstrate its capabilities, we’ve left a link at the end of the article to show you what we created!
AR mainly works on tablets and smartphones. A good example is IKEA’s app that enables users to see through their screens how IKEA’s products would look on the spot, in their homes. Instagram’s faces is another famous example.
But, today, augmented reality goes beyond smartphones and tablets. It can work on special glass (like Google glass), mirrors, and even in cars. One of the latter’s famous providers is WayRay: its hardware puts up holograms on the front car mirror to show you the direction of your choosing.
The main problem of every AR app is the fact that they are, well, apps. Marketers will know well how hard it is to get users to download an application. We like simplicity. That’s why browsing is so popular: search for a website, click on it, visit it. AR isn’t that fast and straightforward just yet. And it’s one thing to see virtual elements on top of the real world, but it’s a whole new thing to have the virtual acknowledge and interact with the real. Now, that’s interesting. Most ARs are unable to provide it, though.
And, to top it all, there aren’t enough use-cases for people to want to use AR. One of the areas the technology turned out to be very interesting is storytelling. Wonderscope app is a very successful example of that, and we’ll talk about it in our next week’s article.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality differs completely with AR in that it fully replaces the real world with a virtual one around you.
Imagine that you’re standing in your bedroom; you put on the VR headsets; you’re transported to Mars to fight with aliens. The possibilities are limitless. Using the console, you can interact with the virtual world, like shoot and blow up the aliens, collect the stones of the red planet, etc.
If augmented reality works with a tablet or a smartphone that most of us already have, you need special headsets for virtual reality. This is seen as a barrier for broad adoption: aside from pricy VR headsets, you might also need a strong computer.
Today there is VR hardware that runs independently from a computer. Even more affordable options are headsets that run on smartphones, like that of the Samsung galaxy.
But, as in the case of AR, virtual reality also has a long road ahead. We’ll not go deep into the details, but the quality of the resolution, the area of sight it covers, and complete ignorance of the real world around you are the main issues that the technology is facing today.
Mixed reality
Mixed reality is seen as a step forward in AR. As opposed to VR, you still see the real world around you. As opposed to AR, you can interact with the virtual objects.
To have a better understanding: IKEA uses augmented reality with which you can see on your screen how its products look into your home. Samsung virtual reality headsets turn your whole area of view into the phone screen, with no trace of reality.
With mixed reality headsets, you see your real table with a virtual computer and virtual keyboard on it, on which you can type freely with your bare hands, and behind it all, you’ll still see your real wall. Often, mixed reality is called augmented reality, but there’s a big difference between the two.
This form of extended reality is the newest and most sophisticated of the three. MR headsets are semitransparent, and the consoles are mostly your hands (Although in some cases, an actual console is used).
The startup that attracted the most attention in the XR space is called Magic Leap. Today the company has already attracted $3 Billion in funding from Google, Andreessen Horowitz, AT&T, and many more. Their headsets are one of the best on the market, but the interesting thing is that since their first product in 2018, no one apart from the investors and advisors has seen the beta version. Because of this, Magic Leap is thought to be one of the most secretive startups in the world, which increases interest in it.
When we talk about mixed reality, we stumble upon some similar issues surrounding VR: The tech is expensive, resolution – low. It’s true that the main advantage of MR is the identification of the real world, but adequate hand monitoring is still a problem in this regard.
The future of extended reality
The main appeal of extended reality is creating astonishingly realistic virtual elements. Unfortunately, this is a promise yet to be satisfied.
“It’s not clear. Only one person can use it at a time. Too expensive” – This is what we read in “Pigmalion’s spectacles”, and these are the issues we face almost a century later.
Regarding the technological limitations, real-world applications of extended reality to our everyday lives are still a bit fuzzy. That is why the tech is seeing more adoption in the workforce. In next week’s article, we’ll be talking about such startups paving the way.
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The real difference between AR, VR, and MR
22 September 2020Augmented and virtual realities are one of the fastest-growing directions in the technological space. The interest has exceeded expectations, with tons of money flowing into the market and new startups popping up like mushrooms after heavy rain. Although so, the adoption rate of the technology is nothing near to what was expected.
Virtual Reality first made its appearance in the gaming industry, but high prices, bad resolution, and bad UX hindered its broad adoption.
Slowly, the industry’s focus shifted from everyday use-cases to applications in medical, educational, and working sectors. Innovative and creative people quickly appeared worldwide to adopt the potential of virtual reality and bring it into our lives. But, when does the story of this technology start, and what are its main challenges today?
Everything starts with a virtual cube
Virtual reality headsets became available on the market in 2012, but its history goes back for decades.
As it often happens, the idea of this technology first appeared in fiction. Enhancing experiences of a game was the core idea of 1935 science fiction Pigmallion’s spectacles. After about 25 years from the writing of the story, the first real prototype was born.
Contrary to the comfortable, light-weight spectacles described in the story, the real prototype of virtual (more precisely, augmented) reality was so heavy and rough it had to be hung on the ceiling. In the video above, we see a 3D simulation of a cube that the device’s wearer saw. This was our first step into the virtual realm, but the road towards fully absorbing its capabilities turned out much harder than expected.
In 1990, the researchers dropped the project. The technology back then wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as needed for making the technology accessible for the masses.
Second Wave
Then the smartphones appeared. We can think of them as one of the most significant achievements in the history of technology. The processors became smaller while their processing power stayed the same. Screen resolution was significantly improved, so the technological barriers for virtual reality weren’t so much of barriers anymore.
Oculus presented the modern prototype of virtual reality headsets in 2012. After that, everything happened quickly: they raised $2 Million on Kickstarter, and, in 2014, Facebook acquired them for $2 Billion. Oculus is one of the most popular virtual reality headsets provider up until today.
The technology quickly became popular, and it wasn’t long until many startups appeared, joined by big companies fighting for the first place. But, the fact still stays the same: in 2020, we haven’t seen the projected virtual reality adoption.
Mark Zuckerberg hoped that Oculus would have one billion users soon. According to the statistics, in 2018, the amount of active VR users worldwide was 171 Million. At the same year’s conference, Mark spoke openly about the topic:
“We have a saying at Facebook that the road is 1% covered – In this case, we’re not even close.”
Today it is thought that the adoption of Augmented and virtual realities will happen faster in the work, medical, and educational environments than in the everyday lives of people. Even so, the technology still has a long road to cover.
Let’s give everything its name
The more sophisticated the different types of virtual reality becomes, the bigger the confusion around it. This led to the adoption of new terminology on the market not to get confused.
Extended reality (XR) refers to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables. Today we have three main directions: Augmented reality (AR), Virtual reality (VR), and Mixed reality (MR).
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality stands for the technology that overlays virtual elements on top of the real world. This is the most affordable form of extended reality, and today anyone can create an AR app if they want to. One of the platforms to use in Unity, and to demonstrate its capabilities, we’ve left a link at the end of the article to show you what we created!
AR mainly works on tablets and smartphones. A good example is IKEA’s app that enables users to see through their screens how IKEA’s products would look on the spot, in their homes. Instagram’s faces is another famous example.
But, today, augmented reality goes beyond smartphones and tablets. It can work on special glass (like Google glass), mirrors, and even in cars. One of the latter’s famous providers is WayRay: its hardware puts up holograms on the front car mirror to show you the direction of your choosing.
The main problem of every AR app is the fact that they are, well, apps. Marketers will know well how hard it is to get users to download an application. We like simplicity. That’s why browsing is so popular: search for a website, click on it, visit it. AR isn’t that fast and straightforward just yet. And it’s one thing to see virtual elements on top of the real world, but it’s a whole new thing to have the virtual acknowledge and interact with the real. Now, that’s interesting. Most ARs are unable to provide it, though.
And, to top it all, there aren’t enough use-cases for people to want to use AR. One of the areas the technology turned out to be very interesting is storytelling. Wonderscope app is a very successful example of that, and we’ll talk about it in our next week’s article.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality differs completely with AR in that it fully replaces the real world with a virtual one around you.
Imagine that you’re standing in your bedroom; you put on the VR headsets; you’re transported to Mars to fight with aliens. The possibilities are limitless. Using the console, you can interact with the virtual world, like shoot and blow up the aliens, collect the stones of the red planet, etc.
If augmented reality works with a tablet or a smartphone that most of us already have, you need special headsets for virtual reality. This is seen as a barrier for broad adoption: aside from pricy VR headsets, you might also need a strong computer.
Today there is VR hardware that runs independently from a computer. Even more affordable options are headsets that run on smartphones, like that of the Samsung galaxy.
But, as in the case of AR, virtual reality also has a long road ahead. We’ll not go deep into the details, but the quality of the resolution, the area of sight it covers, and complete ignorance of the real world around you are the main issues that the technology is facing today.
Mixed reality
Mixed reality is seen as a step forward in AR. As opposed to VR, you still see the real world around you. As opposed to AR, you can interact with the virtual objects.
To have a better understanding: IKEA uses augmented reality with which you can see on your screen how its products look into your home. Samsung virtual reality headsets turn your whole area of view into the phone screen, with no trace of reality.
With mixed reality headsets, you see your real table with a virtual computer and virtual keyboard on it, on which you can type freely with your bare hands, and behind it all, you’ll still see your real wall. Often, mixed reality is called augmented reality, but there’s a big difference between the two.
This form of extended reality is the newest and most sophisticated of the three. MR headsets are semitransparent, and the consoles are mostly your hands (Although in some cases, an actual console is used).
The startup that attracted the most attention in the XR space is called Magic Leap. Today the company has already attracted $3 Billion in funding from Google, Andreessen Horowitz, AT&T, and many more. Their headsets are one of the best on the market, but the interesting thing is that since their first product in 2018, no one apart from the investors and advisors has seen the beta version. Because of this, Magic Leap is thought to be one of the most secretive startups in the world, which increases interest in it.
When we talk about mixed reality, we stumble upon some similar issues surrounding VR: The tech is expensive, resolution – low. It’s true that the main advantage of MR is the identification of the real world, but adequate hand monitoring is still a problem in this regard.
The future of extended reality
The main appeal of extended reality is creating astonishingly realistic virtual elements. Unfortunately, this is a promise yet to be satisfied.
“It’s not clear. Only one person can use it at a time. Too expensive” – This is what we read in “Pigmalion’s spectacles”, and these are the issues we face almost a century later.
Regarding the technological limitations, real-world applications of extended reality to our everyday lives are still a bit fuzzy. That is why the tech is seeing more adoption in the workforce. In next week’s article, we’ll be talking about such startups paving the way.