More people are aware of virtual reality than augmented reality due to the extensive use of VR in video games. Augmented reality, AR, has actually been used in a variety of settings for several decades, but it’s only in the past few years that it has made its way into consumer goods. The recent attention brought by the successful Pokemon Go app and the not so successful Google Glass device have made AR more familiar to the public. If Apple corporation carries through with its plans, AR could become even more popular.
Augmented reality is distinguished from virtual reality by its combination of real world aspects either directly or in secondary form with artificial features in real time. By contrast, a virtual reality setting consists only of computer generated images.
The previously mentioned definition allows AR to take a few different forms. While there are no clear plans to date, it’s likely that Apple will apply augmented reality to its iPhone and possibly create augmented goggles similar to Google Glass. With regards to iPhone applications, it’s been suggested by analysts that features similar to Snapchat’s capability to superimpose special effects on objects in pictures or even full-motion videos. Augmented reality could also permit the iPhone’s camera to alter the depth of part or all of a photo after the fact. This ability might extend to isolating components of an image to allow them to be rotated or relocated within the picture. Digital goggles presents another version of AR that Apple might involve itself in the future. The rough idea is to create something similar to Google Glass that would receive information wirelessly from an iPhone and project it in front of the wearer.
The combination of processor power and a built-in video camera offer new opportunities for AR in consumer electronics. The popularity of Pokemon Go stands out as one recent example. The use of artificial images integrated into live real-world video, though, has been in place in other venues for some time. An early and well-known example is in weather reports taking satellite images and inserting icons and markings to indicate high and low pressure fronts along with wind speed and direction. It's also being utilized in medicine to project veins and other hidden features on the skin of patients.
While Apple is contemplating the development of enhanced glasses that work with its iPhone, the basic idea has already been implemented in various manufacturing settings. Installing electronics and wiring into a passenger airliner is an especially complicated task. Since the late 1980s, Boeing has provided goggles to their technicians that project wiring diagrams on the lenses that serve as guides for actual placement. Lately, Google Glass has become the preferred method of carrying out this operation. The DAQRI smart helmet allows this technology to be applied to other skilled labor operations. While not exactly the same as a head-mounted display, the heads-up display is another early example used by fighter pilots that projects vital information on the transparent windshield of a cockpit.
The more familiar methods of AR involve taking either video of the real world or a window to the world itself and adding enhancing images, but the definition of augmented reality also allows for the projection of artificial images on objects in the real world. One experimental example of this is the use of a shader lamp to project images onto a cube that can be manipulated by the user through the addition of motion detectors that observe the locations of the user’s hands. Future uses of this form of AR could include the projection of a computer keyboard or any other type of control panel on a plain table. This method would eliminate the need for constructing a physical panel that costs extra money and can malfunction.
