Hey Guys we the team of HELPING SURFERS INC. has come up with a all new and most in trend series of Augmented Reality. We hope that you had enjoyed our last series. In this part we are going to share information about these.
What is Augmented Reality?
Augmented reality (AR) is an experience where designers enhance parts of users’ physical world with computer-generated input. Designers create inputs—ranging from sound to video, to graphics to GPS overlays and more—in digital content which responds in real time to changes in the user’s environment, typically movement.
Augmented reality is the blending of interactive digital elements – like dazzling visual overlays, buzzy haptic feedback, or other sensory projections – into our real-world environments. If you experienced the hubbub of Pokemon Go, you witnessed augmented reality in action. This (once incredibly popular) mobile game allowed users to view the world around them through their smartphone cameras while projecting game items, including onscreen icons, score, and ever-elusive Pokemon creatures, as overlays that made them seem as if those items were right in your real-life neighborhood. The game's design was so immersive that it sent millions of kids and adults alike walking (and absentmindedly stumbling) through their real-world backyards in search of virtual prizes.
Google SkyMap is another well-known AR app. It overlays information about constellations, planets and more as you point the camera of your smartphone or tablet toward the heavens. Wikitude is an app that looks up information about a landmark or object by your simply pointing at it using your smartphone's camera. Need help visualizing new furniture in your living room? The IKEA Place app will provide an overlay of a new couch for that space before you buy it so that you can make sure it fits [source: Marr]
But AR is more than just smartphone fun. It's a technology that finds uses in more serious matters, from business to warfare to medicine.
The U.S. Army, for example, uses AR tools to create digitally enhanced training missions for soldiers. It's become such a prevalent concept that the army's given one program an official name, Synthetic Training Environment, or STE. Wearable AR glasses and headsets may well help futuristic armies process data overload at incredible speeds, helping commanders make better battlefield decisions on the fly. There are fascinating business benefits, too. The Gatwick passenger app, for example helps travelers navigate the insanity of a packed airport using its AR app.
The possibilities of AR tech are limitless. The only uncertainty is how smoothly, and quickly, developers will integrate these capabilities into devices that we'll use on a daily basis.
Augmented Reality in the Military
Militaries were some of the early adopters of gaming technology, seeing the possibilities for training soldiers for warfare realistically but in safe settings. And militaries are likely to do the same with AR.
Soldiers will plunge into an evermore immersive battlefield environment accentuated with helmet-mounted displays, smart glasses and much more. It's a market that may be worth $1.4 billion in 2018.
Arcane Technologies, a Canadian company, has sold augmented-reality devices to the U.S. military. The company produces a head-mounted display — the sort of device that was supposed to bring us virtual reality — that superimposes information on your world. Consider a squad of soldiers in Afghanistan, performing reconnaissance on an opposition hideout. An AR-enabled head-mounted display could overlay blueprints or a view from a satellite or overheard drone directly onto the soldiers' field of vision.
And in an odd bit of fiction becoming reality, a lot of these military applications are just now becoming possible, in part because of the amazingly advanced physics calculations and programming made possible by ... the first-person-shooter gaming industry [source: Nichols].
Now that we've established some of the many current and burgeoning uses of augmented reality, let's take a look at the technology's limitations and what the future holds.
Our next part of Augmented Reality series is based on The Mobile Revolution and Future of Augmented Reality.
