Remember as a kid the old View Masters that you would slide a cardboard disc with slides in to view Disneyland or the seven wonders of the world? Well, Virtual Reality has come a long way since then.
Most of the major tech players are experimenting with and developing various Augmented and Virtual Reality apps and programs. This article is meant as a very brief summary of a bit of what is out there. A comprehensive overview of the subject would be a very big book and would be outdated before it was complete.
Most AR & VR tech uses a GPS and Internet connection to put an animation of some sort into a viewer to put layers of data on top of a realtime video or even real life. For example looking through the viewer on your smart phone to see live video of your surroundings with layers of graphics to enhance the live view. Some AR and VR devices show the composite on an external video screen like a television. In some viewers, you look through a screen to your environment and an animated overlay shows on the screen as well so you see a composite of real life and the animation.
Augmented Reality is taking computer graphics and overlaying them on what you see in real life (IRL). This has been used in one way or another for years. As a kid, I remember Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride where at the end you would see yourself in a mirror and next to you on the seat was a ghost. These days it is usually done with a small smart device. For example, looking through the viewer on your smart phone to see live video of your surroundings with layers of graphics to enhance the live view. In some AR viewers, you look through a screen to your environment and an animated overlay is reflected on the screen as well so you see a composite of real life and the animation. A good example of this technology is the ever popular Pokemon Go game.
Virtual Reality is totally made up reality that you enter with special goggles. When you look around wearing the goggles it looks like you are actually in the other world. This can be used for games education, drills and simulated training for just about everything. It often uses an HMD (Head Mounted Display).
As the tech gets better and better, AR & VR has been gaining in popularity for quite a while now. A big surge in popularity was reached when Pokemon GO was released last year. It became the fastest game ever to top the App Store and Google Play in history. Within two days of release, it was installed on 5% of the Android devices in the United States. Some VR & AR apps are designed to be useful like seeing what a sofa would look like in your house and some are designed to keep you on Facebook, Google or whatever longer.
Some of the first mentions of augmented reality were by L. Frank Baum in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900. In the book, when a traveler first goes into the Emerald City they are given a green pair of glasses so that when they look through the glasses the city is Emerald colored. Another example by Baum is his description of a pair of glasses in The Master Key in 1901. "It consists of this pair of spectacles. While you wear them everyone you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. The good will bear the letter 'G,' the evil the letter 'E.' The wise will be marked with a 'W' and the foolish with an 'F.' The kind will show a 'K' upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter 'C. Thus you may determine by a single look the true natures of all those you encounter." More modern references are by cyberpunk author William Gibson, who coined the term “The Matrix” in his book Neuromancer. In Gibson’s book, the matrix is the cyber world that you can “jack in to” with the use of special hardware. The term was used a few years later for the movie trilogy of the same name starring Keanu Reeves.
Uses Of Computer Aided Reality
Have you ever seen shots of a football field where you can see the yards needed for first down or other goals visible on the field? That’s an example of Augmented Reality. Here Are Some More:
- See what new furniture looks like, in your house
- Try out a new hairstyle with no commitment
- Landscape and re-landscape your house without lifting a shovel
- Go to the museum, from the comfort of your own home
- Do a virtual tour of the Seven Wonders of the World with just your phone
A Quick Look Into a Possible Scenario:
You are in a strange city. You pick up your phone and look at the street through it. Each building has an overlay with the address and type of business. You scroll through some options seeing menus, sales, their hottest selling item, info about the company, their environmental and human rights track record. You read some reviews by friends then more reviews from others. Swipe your finger and you see that the band Poptone is performing at the music hall on the left this weekend. Swipe again and see that in 1968 there was an anti-war march down this street and Abby Hoffman got arrested. In 1930 Al Capone ran moonshine from the warehouse that was here. A spy for the British was discovered hiding in the barn that was here in 1777.
Apple
Apple released their ARKit at the Apple Developer Conference in early June. ARKit is Apple’s free Software Developer Kit (SDK). It was downloaded several million times and YouTube videos showing what it could do appeared right away. ARKit is mostly for iPhone8 but it can do some pretty amazing things on iPhone7.
There is also Apple’s rumored answer to Google Glass: Project Mirrorshades. While not officially announced, some details of the project leaked online last month. The word is that the specs will let you communicate with it by shaking your head and you will hear it through bone conduction speakers. It will connect with the Internet, Siri, and iPhones.
Google has been quite busy with AR & VR. One of Google’s first forays into AR is Google Glass. They went hot and heavy with it for a few years then backed off. A recent update says maybe they are ready for another round.
They also have a product called Google Cardboard that is made of, that’s right cardboard. It is a cardboard HMD viewer that you can make or buy that fits your smart phone. It can either be strapped or held p to your eyes and has two eye holes that you look through to see your phone. There are quite a few companies making their own version of Cardboard made out of things other than cardboard. There are a variety of apps available for different experiences. Google even has a free SDK so people can develop their own VR experience. As you turn your head your view changes to see a different aspect of the virtual reality.
Google’s Daydream is another of their VR platforms. The Daydream View is an HMD set up made from cloth components with a slot to place your Daydream compatible Android device.
Google has released a technology called Virtual Positioning System for Tango, Google's AR platform. They have partnered with certain museums and Lowe’s Hardware stores to be able to navigate your way around inside certain stores to find a desired product using a Tango enabled phone.
Mattel View Master
Back to the old View Masters of years ago. Now the View Master is a VR viewer that uses Google Cardboard tech. You buy the View Master goggles and put your smart phone into it, download an app and you are ready to start exploring the sea, outer space, or walking among dinosaurs.
Facebook bought Oculus, a VR glasses company back in 2014 for $2 billion so you might get the idea that they are pretty serious about AR & VR. In the new Facebook Spaces using the Oculus Rift goggles, you can have a virtual meeting or virtual trip with friends who are not even in the same room. You can hang out in a zoo or even on Mars and take selfies of your VR avatar in the VR world. If you have a 360-degree video of your own house or any other location you can go there. Facebook also has Facebook Stories which many critics say copies most of its features from Snapchat (see below).
Facebook has introduced their Frame Studio and AR Studio for developers to create all sorts of effects on photos and video. Masks, animal faces, bug eyes, frames can be created and shared.
Snapchat
Snapchat is a social media platform that uses VR overlays to place things like funny faces, big tongues and rabbit ears on top of your picture or video. There are also frames and location specific graphics you can use. With Snapchat’s World Lenses you can actually place a 3d object, like a flower, in the video, and you can walk around it and look at different sides of it with your camera/device. They also sell Snapchat Spectacles, special glasses that are capable of recording up to 10 seconds of video that you can upload to Snapchat.
Microsoft
Microsoft Kinect is one example of Augmented Reality. The Kinect camera takes video of players and places them onscreen in a new environment to play games, exercise, dance, etc. The Xbox itself is more Virtual Reality as there is no camera getting data
HoloLens is Microsoft’s Head Mounted Display. Microsoft calls both AR & VR “mixed reality,” pointing out that they are both points on the spectrum of reality. Some of the applications available or soon to be available for HoloLens are Skype, HoloTour (virtual tourism), a number of games, a Milky Way exploration app called Galaxy Explorer and design software through companies like AutoDesk, Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL) and Trimble Navigation.
Microsoft will release its View Mixed Reality feature as part of a Windows 10 update later this year where you can augment 3D objects IRL on any Windows 10 with a webcam.
Amazon
Amazon has been quietly hiring a VR team and is keeping mum as to their exact intentions but it is pretty sure that they are currently working on shopping apps so that you can get a better idea of a product before you order it by wearing VR headset. It also looks like they are looking to produce original content for VR headsets. Amazon Studios hired Genna Terranova, the former director of the Tribeca Film Festival to take charge of its VR content initiative last year.
HTC Vive
HTC’s Vive is a VR headset with two hand held controllers released last year to consumers. It is connected to a compatible computer for gaming and other uses. Just this week it was announced that Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao will be featured in a VR boxing game on HTC Vive. Word is he will referee and maybe even train boxers in the game, called The Manny Pacquiao Boxing Kings VR.
PlayStation VR
The PlayStation VR headset was launched last year for use with the PlayStation 4 Game Console. It has sold over 1 million units. In addition to being viewable through the headset, it can also output the video feed for viewing on a connected television. Several players can simultaneously output to the television for multiplayer games.
Samsung
Samsung has the Gear VR, a mobile virtual reality headset developed by Samsung Electronics, with Facebook's Oculus, and manufactured by Samsung. Gear VR requires a compatible Samsung Galaxy mobile device for virtual imaging.
Samsung actually first patented an HMD in January 2005 to use with a mobile phone, however, at the time, mobile phone technology wasn't up to the task. Samsung continued to work on the technology off and on until now.
HoloKit
HoloKit, not to be confused with Microsoft’s Hololens, is made of cardboard, like Google Cardboard but instead of Virtual Reality, it is for Augmented Reality. With Google Cardboard you look at the Android device for visuals, HoloKit reflects the augmented layer from the device onto a fresnel lens that you are looking through so you see a composite of the physical world and what ever the app you are using shows you.
Ready To Jack In?
Really, these tech companies are just scratching the surface of possibilities in virtual and augmented realities. Not even mentioned is breakthroughs in device/human communication. Both Elon Musk and Facebook among others are working on new technologies to close the gap between man and machine. As the line between IRL and virtual reality blurs, is it only a matter of time before we truly jack into the matrix?
- By Wayne Porter