Virtual, Augmented, Mixed - Journey between reality - naekranie.pl

In August 2012, a new era of virtual reality began - during the E3 Palmer Luckey fair presented Oculus Rift.Seven years after this, this niche industry is coming out of the shadows until recently.And along with the virtual reality, this expanded and mixed is gaining popularity.How to distinguish them from each other and what are they for?

VR technology was of interest to experts and enthusiasts of new technologies long before the birth of Oculus.University considerations on devices displaying the image, which is mounted on the head, was already carried out in the 1950s.last century, but for the creation of the first functional system you had to wait until the second half of the 1960s.It was then that American engineer Ivan Sutherland developed a device called The Sword of Damocles - a mechanical helmet capable of displaying simple objects.But we will return to this equipment later in the text, because he is not a typical representative of the VR family family, he somewhat ahead of his era.

Until the 90s.VR sets functioned almost exclusively as industrial tools and only at the end of the century, the first attempts to massage this technology were made.Unfortunately, the then computers and consoles were too weak to provide sufficiently satisfying experiences.Tutors such as Sega or Nintendo tried in a clash with virtual reality, everyone fell.It seemed that Virtual Boy's defeat would always seal the fate of this technology.After the blame of VR sets from the end of the 20th century.age almost no one was seriously thinking about returning VR to mainstream use.

Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, was of good cheer and believed that he would restore virtual reality to favor.At the E3 fair in 2012, he presented a new generation goggle prototype, and a few weeks later, exactly on August 1, the development version of Oculus Rift went to Kickstarter.Although the creators needed $ 250,000 to finance the project, after 36 hours they collected a round one million, and on the day of closing the campaign, the counter was almost $ 2.5 million.

At that time, such a result was impressive - Oculus turned out to be the fifth most -supported project at Kickstartra.It was the moment when a crowdfunding service entered the path of success - the collections quickly appeared that beat the result twisted by Palmer's team, and the rehearsal of a million dollars was broken more and more often.

Rift managed to sign up in the history of digital entertainment, and Luckey has done his own - he proved that in the technology industry there is a place for consumer VR goggles.

It is true that we had to wait a few long years for the market debut of virtual reality.Oculus Rift left the development phase only in 2016.Soon competitors also appeared in the form of HTC Vive and PlayStation VR and much simpler devices for the mobile market.The virtual reality began its march to the glory.

Rozszerzone widzenie

I mentioned that we would return to The Sword of Damocles.It is worth remembering that the first goggles were not equipment for virtual reality - this bizarre equipment did not display the image on classic screens, the objects showed in the user's field of view.It was probably the first device of augmented reality (AR) that mixed our reality with this digital.

On YouTube you can find a movie that presents the action of this technological strange:

However, let's jump to more modern times.When Palmer Luckey tried to conquer the market with his Oculus, Google engineers wanted to connect the real world and digital image.The corporation in April 2012 was presented by Google Glass, futuristic glasses with a small, transparent display placed in the field of view of the right eye.It was to act as a virtual interface, which would show us, for example,.maps, notifications or entries from social networks.Glass was to make us perceive the world just like the T-800 in the terminator did, enriching it with information coming from our phone.

The Google project did not repeat the success of Oculus.Equipment quickly met with acute criticism from society.It was accused of designers that their equipment did not respect the privacy of bystanders.A camera was placed in the frame, which constantly recorded what the user of Glass glasses looked at.The corporation withdrew from the idea of implementing the equipment on the consumer market and directed it to the business industry, in which it did not do well.In 2015, Google abandoned the development program of controversial goggles.

This does not mean, however, that the technology of augmented reality has gone into oblivion.Perhaps the most promising project collapsed, but it quickly turned out that AR was interested in other companies.Mobile stores began to overflow with applications that allowed to display virtual objects in the image intercepted by the camera on the phone.And one of them even became a global hit.And I can bet that the vast majority of readers have heard about her.

On July 6, 2016, Pokémon Go debuts in mobile stores and raises the hearts of players with storm.Niantic could expect that the combination of innovative technology and a popular brand can bring success, but its scale probably nobody expected.Almost everyone played in Pokémon that summer.

I perfectly remember the frenzy that the players enveloped in the summer of 2016 - due to the fact that I just took a puppy under my roof, I had to leave the house for a walk every few hours.And regardless of an hour, I always met on my way groups of lovers of pocket creatures, not only at school age.

It could seem that three years ago the immesty technology market divided into two parts - virtual reality using the helmets generating the image through classic displays and augmented reality equipment, which applied a digital image to a fragment of the real world.

Unfortunately, when we slowly started to embrace what all this AR and VR was about, Microsoft entered the stage and announced to everyone that there is another digital reality: MR.

Technologia pomiędzy technologiami.

The breakthrough took place a few months before the pokemon frenzy.During the March conference, Microsoft presented equipment on which he secretly worked for many months.In the era of ubiquitous leaks from the "well -informed people", the Hololens helmet's prime minister was a big surprise.And at the same time she mixed up the immunity of technologies on the market.Microsoft presented equipment that resembled classic AR goggles, but stated that this device presents a solution that is a hybrid AR and VR.

Mixed reality, i.e. the technology of mixed reality (sometimes called hybrid reality) developed the concept of goggles for solutions used so far in VR equipment.Its biggest advantage was the possibility of penetrating the physical and digital world, interacting between these two reality.

And at this stage a large part of the readers can grab their heads.At first glance, MR goggles may not differ from AR goggles, and their similarity to VR technology may seem stretched.Let's leave this historical outline and focus on the most important.

To the answer to the question, what is ax, VR and MR to Czorta and how to distinguish it from each other.

VR – pełna immersja

It is best to look at VR technologies like a tool that allows you to fully cut off the world around us and completely move to the digital, virtual reality.VR helmets are designed in such a way that they do not allow us stimuli from the outside.Putting the goggles on the head, displays grow in front of our eyes, which in an ideal scenario should cover our entire field of view.Then the computer generates a virtual environment that we can see in the range of 360 degrees.Wherever we turn, we will see virtual objects.

A perfectly designed experience VR will be able to cheat our brain that the world we are watching is not only a digital creation, but it really exists.Objects have depth, we can look at them at different angle, and when, for example.We will crouch, the perspective from which we observe a given scene will change.Movement recognition systems that monitor the location of our goggles allow such precise tracking of our body..

At this point, it is also worth mentioning how we move on virtual reality.The first copies of the new generation goggles used classic console pads, but more immersion solutions quickly appeared: controllers such as PlayStation Move HTC Vive Controller or Oculus Touch.These equipment is also monitored by traffic tracking, which is why the equipment is able to generate their digital image in virtual reality.

This is one of the most important advantages of VR technology.Thanks to traffic controllers, we see where our hands are located and the controllers held in them.This allows us to interact with the digital world directly - when we play Beat Saber, we have to wave our hands to cut the blocks.Just as if we were holding real light swords.

Immersion is the motto of all top VR sets.Their producers want to transfer us to the virtual world as much as possible.The goggles were lined with a sponge with a shape memory that adheres perfectly to the face and cuts off the eyes from sunlight.Experiment with wireless systems to increase the freedom of movement and even with haptic systems that simulate impacts, impression of warm.All this to move us to the world on the screen as much as possible.

By firing up the VR experience, we are to feel as if the world we are looking at was our world, and all our movements influenced him

AR – nakładka na rzeczywistość

Augmented reality technology works in a different way.As I mentioned when describing Google goggles, AR is to enrich our surroundings with new, digital elements.They can be handy notification systems or tools that make work easier.

The potential of AR goggles will be used by business employees the most.A great example here is e.g..IKEI application, thanks to which we can try on virtual furniture for our apartment.The system scores them accordingly and will allow you to see from each side, via the application on the phone.Thanks to this, we will know how more or less a given piece of furniture will look in our home before we go to the store.In turn, some companies from the logistics industry use AR technology to facilitate warehouses of moving around industrial halls.

This does not mean, however, that AR will work only in business.On smartphones, we can also download games in augmented reality - not only Pokemon Go - and useful tools such as a digital scoop or innovative navigations that apply direction arrows to the sight of the camera captured by the camera on the phone.

However, the augmented reality has one serious limitation - digital elements do not interact with digital elements.Yes, we will place virtual objects in our surroundings, but when we try to touch them, nothing will happen.This is only a digital image applied to what the lens is captured in the phone or goggles.If we want to interact, we must reach because the hybrid reality.

MR – technologia zmiksowana

At first glance, the mixed reality looks like the expanded one, but it differs from it in the way of functioning.This technology creates a three -dimensional model of our surroundings to better arrange digital items in our surroundings.Thanks to this, they are not only displayed in the form of a flat image.They also have their own virtual size.

Okay, but what does that actually mean?Well, using MR technology, we can interact with virtual objects through physical objects - be it our hands or dedicated movement controllers.Thanks to this, we can support the interface, e.g..using gestures or virtual indicators.MR goggles display the image like AR equipment, but allow you to control applications as if we were using the VR set.

To better understand the differences between these technologies, let's imagine that the Total War: Warhammer II continuation is created and at the same time goes to the PC, VR, AR and MR platforms.Here's how it would look at each of them:

- PC - a three -dimensional image would be displayed on a flat screen, and we would control the army of the mouse and keyboard;

- VR - we would enter the game world directly and hang in a three -dimensional space over our army.We would change units by pointing to them with traffic controllers.We could also change the perspective and look at the game world from the point of view of individual heroes;

- AR - We would start the game on the phone, and as a game field defined the surface of the countertop in the living room.The elements of the game would be applied to the image captured by the lens, so that we could observe the board at different angles.The units would be marked by tapping on the touch screen and with its help we would give orders;

- MR - The image from the game would display in the field of our view, on MR goggles.We could define its area and observe it exactly as in the case of playing the AR platform.But we would move the units by marking them with gestures of the hands or through a special indicator recognized in the same way in which VR controllers are recognized.

Although the technologies of alternative reality mentioned here are just crawling on the market, they can gain importance over the years.I hope that this short guide will facilitate their distinction and understanding, for which each of them can be used.