Do you want to become Iron Man and see what all he sees when he is on a mission, or do you want to experience being a Storm Trooper? Well, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is the space which lets you, as a user enter this three dimensional computer generated environment which can be explored, interacted with and sensed by you. Extensive Reality is a term which is used to encapsulate Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality. Extensive Reality lets you suspend believes and accept the computer generated environment as the real environment.
You can experience all this magic through specialized hardware which includes Head Mounted Displays, which is now generalized as “VR Headsets”, headphones which lets you get immersed in binaural audio, and controllers through which you interact with the environment and stimulate it as per your needs. Extensive Reality lets to experience the things which you cannot get a hands on right away, or some scenarios which are even impossible to get to. For example, sitting at the comfort zone of your house, you can transport yourself in the virtual zone of Ancient Greece where you can see the daily lives of Spartans, explore ancient Athens or even spectate the infamous “300” scene of “THIS IS SPARTA!!” right in front of your eyes. Now let’s have an in depth look into each of these Extensive Reality Technologies.
WHAT IS VIRTUAL REALITY
Let’s kick off with Virtual Reality. While most people associate virtual reality with gaming, it’s being currently used for a wide variety of applications. This includes medicine, marketing, architecture, education and many more. There is no limit on what you can do with this technology.
Virtual Reality may seem like the hottest new piece of technology, but no, it was used long before innovators even coined the term. It all started from the 360 degree murals from the 19th Century. This can be seen as the first ever attempt to make the viewers immersed in an artificial environment. But the real start-up of this technology is traced back to the 1930’s, where Edward Link created the Link Trainer, which was the first commercial flight simulator. This simulator mimicked in air turbulence and other common issues, allowing the military to train pilots during the World War II safely.
The real progression towards the development of Virtual Reality started from 1950’s. Morton Heilig’s Sensorama, which was an arcade style theater cabinet that would stimulate senses like sight, smell and sound. It featured stereo speakers, a stereoscopic 3D display, fans, smell generators and a vibrating chair. Basically this was the 1950’s version of 4DX Cinemas. Then during the 1960’s the first VR Head Mounted Display was created, made by Morton Heilig himself. Then, finally the word “Virtual Reality” was coined in 1987 by Jaron Lanier, who was the founder of Visual Programming Lab (VPL).
Later on, in the 1990’s VR started to see itself in the gaming arcades. Sega was the one which introduced their VR headsets. Later they even announced it for their home console, Sega Genesis in 1993 at the CES.
Skip all the way and come back to the 21st Century, Virtual Reality is almost becoming mainstream. With the rapid advancements in virtual reality technology, Facebook, Google, Samsung, Microsoft and Acer have started to develop their own Virtual Reality headsets, and with the rise of powerful smartphones, it has never been easier for you to have an entirely immersive and interactive experience. Standalone headsets have started to enter the market, which is not dependent upon a PC which requires 2 NVidia RTX 2080ti in SLI along with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper and a big room with multiple sensors to run games or other content optimally. These are more like smartphones which can run all the content which is actually better than the previous iterations of virtual reality content and it doesn’t even let your wallet cry. So, now you can actually experience being Iron Man while you’re on your way to your destination in a car, or before you go to get your night’s sleep.
A Brief VR Timeline
- 1838 – Stereoscopic photos and viewers
- 1929 – Link Trainer – the first flight simulator
- 1950 – Morton Heilig’s Sensorama
- 1960 – First VR Head mounted display
- 1987 – The term VR is coined.
- 1993 – SEGA announces VR headset for its Sega Genesis console.
- 2010 – Palmer Luckey designed the first Oculus Prototype
- 2014 – Valve shows their StreamSight prototype.
- 2014 – Facebook purchases Oculus VR for $3 billion dollars.
- 2016 – HTC ships first units of HTC Vive headset.
- 2017 – Tech giants such as HTC, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Sony have their own VR consumer products available for the masses.
- 2019 – Oculus releases Go, which is a standalone VR headset that does not require a powerful PC to run it.
- 2019 – (May) Valve announces their own top of the line VR headset named Index. Expected shipping by July 1st.
WHAT IS AUGMENTED REALITY
How would you feel if dinosaurs came back to life? Or, you could actually see some chemical reactions which happen at atomic level right in front of your eyes? Worry not, because Augmented Reality is here to save your day. Augmented Reality is the way through which you make the real world more enhanced. You can add various computer generated objects on top of the real world using some sort of a smart device which can be a smartphone or a tablet which has a camera system, multiple motion detection sensors and a display.
In simple words, Augmented Reality is a way to alter form of reality where content lays over users’ real world views. The technology allows you to add digital assets to their physical world. This has a lot of uses, from assisting pilots through Heads Up Display (HUD) to improving our Instagram stories with a wide array of filters.
Augmented Reality was born at Harvard University in 1968 by Ivan Sutherland, an electrical engineering professor who created head mounted display system. He is also widely regarded as the Father of Computer Graphics. This headset was so heavy, that it was anchored to the ceiling to operate. Users also had to be strapped into the system for it to work, making the experience extremely uncomfortable.
In the year 1990, a Boeing researcher named Tom Caudell coined the term “Augmented Reality”, the term which we all know today. In 1994, the first theater production to use augmented reality was created. “Dancing in Cyberspace” presented acrobats dancing in and around virtual objects on stage as a piece of art was produced by Julie Martin.
Then, in the year 2000, the most important advancement in the Augmented Reality technology happened. Hirokazu Kato from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan created and released software called ARToolKit. Through this, one could capture real world actions and combine it with interactions of virtual objects. Later, in the year 2009, ARToolKit made AR available to the Internet Browsers.
But that was the past, in the present day, Augmented Reality has evolved at a rapid pace and is being used for both commercial and individual purposes. Since 2011, companies like Coca-Cola, Disney, National Geographic, Nike’s Jordan have embraced Augmented Reality and have executed campaigns at large events.
What do you think Pokémon Go actually was? It was one of the best iterations of Augmented Reality games that came to the consumer market. Before this, there was Ingress which was on the same lines as Pokémon Go but was way less user friendly and had the interface was too much of a struggle to get into. You can say if Ingress is to Microsoft DOS, then Pokémon Go is to Windows 7.
At the end of 2017, Snapchat reported 187 million active users, and it is through Snapchat, Augmented Reality became so mainstream. Augmented Reality is so popular now that multiple social networks, businesses and retailers have started to incorporate this tech into their own business.
So, if you want to have a look at dinosaurs coming back to life, you can have a look at Dinosaur 4D+. It is an Augmented Reality app and a set of flash cards. You can scan flashcards to see 3D dinosaurs. With this, you can see dinosaurs in action, rotate them and zoom in and out. This app also gives a brief information about each dinosaur. Additionally, if chemistry an interest of yours, you can check out Elements 4D. Similar to Dinosaur 4D+, it uses AR to make content more fun and engaging. First you need to make paper cubes from special element blocks. Then all you need to do is, place these cubes in front of the smartphone or a tablet’s camera to see a representation of chemical elements, their names and their atomic weights. To explore elements, you can bring together two or more cubes to find out if elements react and you can even see their chemical reactions.
A Brief AR Timeline
- 1968 – Ivan Sutherland developed the first head mounted display system
- 1990 – Boeing researcher, Tom Caudell coins the term “Augmented Reality”
- 1994- Julie Martin creates the first AR Theatre production “Dancing in Cyberspace”
- 2000 – Hirorkazu Kato creates ARToolKit
- 2009 – ARToolKit brings AR to web browsers
- 2014 – Google announces shipment of Google Glass
- 2014 – Magic Leap announced largest AR investment of $50 million
- 2016 – Microsoft HoloLens Dev Kit sets to ship
- 2019 – Microsoft announces HoloLens 2
WHAT IS MIXED REALITY
Now that you know what Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is, to grasp the idea of what Mixed Reality is, all you need to do is imagine the DragonBallZ fusion. Fuse both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality and you get Mixed Reality! This hybrid system involves both the physical world elements and the virtual world elements. The differentiating factor between Virtual/Augmented Reality and Mixed reality is that, Mixed Reality is designed to make you feel like you’re a participant in the action, rather than being a spectator whose job is just to see and watch events as they happen and pass by.
Many Mixed Reality projects experiment with adding virtual elements to the physical world. An example of this can be, some Mixed Reality Projects involve adding digital avatars or holograms, other virtual images and lays to a physical installation to innovate human experience. Other type of Mixed Reality projects involve building devices and technologies that simulate physical human senses that are more difficult to simulate such as taste, touch and smell.
Mixed Reality allows you to see and immerse yourself in a world around you even as you interact with a virtual environment using your own hands, all without ever removing your headset. It provides the ability to have one foot or hand in the real world and the other in a virtual environment, breaking the concepts between real and virtual, offering an experience that can change the way you game and work today.
One of the best working demo of this technology was shown at the E3 2015, during the Microsoft’s HoloLens presentation, where an ordinary table was seen as an interactive virtual world from Minecraft. This demo showed a person walking around the virtual landscape holding its position and when the individual closer, the virtual landscape would also get closer like a real world object would.
Mixed Reality can be divided into 2 types. One is based on Holographic Devices in which, the device is able to place digital content in the real world as if it is actually present. The other type is Immersive Devices, which is based on the device’s ability to create a sense of presence, hiding the physical world and replacing it with a digital experience. This is a more immersive and natural virtual environment.
Recently there has been a profound increase in the consumer hardware which is associated with Mixed Reality. Samsung’s Odyssey Mixed Reality headset is an example of this. This is a Head Mounted Display which incorporates Windows’ Mixed Reality environment. It is a premium headset which can also act as a Virtual Reality Headset. It requires a PC with standard specifications to power this device. Content is delivered using Microsoft Store, which acts like a virtual market place and an app store.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VIRTUAL REALITY, AUGMENTED REALITY AND MIXED REALITY
| Virtual Reality | Augmented Reality | Mixed Reality |
| Requires specialised hardware and also requires its supporting hardware such as VR headsets, controllers, and haptic gloves. | Requires a device which has sensors, camera, accelerometer, gyroscope, digital compass, CPU, GPU and display. A mobile phone is capable to run AR applications. | Requires specialised Windows Mixed Reality head mounted displays along with controllers. These do not require additional sensors. |
| This is meant to be fully immersive. | This is not fully immersive. These interact with the real world objects. | This is a combination of both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Thus it provides both immersion and interaction with the real world objects. |
| Is dependent upon a powerful PC. Recently standalone VR headsets have also hit the market. | This can work with mobiles devices such as smartphones and tablets. | This is dependent upon a PC with a moderate to powerful specifications. |
| Virtual Reality hardware starts from $49 which is Google Cardboard and extends to up $799 for the full HTC Vive Pro Kit. | Augmented Reality can be easily accessed from any smartphone with decent specifications. | Mixed Reality is a newer technology which has started to get into consumer hands. Samsung Odyssey MR Headset is a HMD developed by Samsung which is for $499. |
Conclusion
As for the future of Virtual Reality, we can expect things on the lines of Ready Player One. Though it started off in a very small scale in the game VR Chat, once the technology further begins to slip into the mainstream, develops and becomes even stronger consumer product and starts to replace our smartphones, we can see ourselves living our second lives as a virtual avatar in some virtual Valhalla.
Augmented Reality is going to boom as the technology advances in the future. It is predicted by experts that by the year 2025, Extensive Reality industry is going to be worth over $25 billion. Augmented Reality is going to penetrate many industries like healthcare, tourism, retail marketing, and real estate.
With near endless configuring possibilities, VR is seeing more and more companies exploring its implementations. In healthcare industry, VR is making therapies even more reliable. In travel and tourism, Extensive Reality enables the tourists to browse through nearby tourist attractions and translate sign boards to their native language. Further it also makes the destination traveling even more engaging. Education is a field which is showing most improvement over time. Google Expeditions is an educational Virtual Reality project which is developed by Google to familiarize the students with famous trips all over the globe, using the power of Virtual Reality.
This is a well thought out article.