Augmented and Virtual Reality

Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR and VR) are two technology concepts providing significant benefits in the new digital universe. These technologies open new ways of working in areas such as manufacturing, gaming, media, automotive and healthcare, allowing for both increased productivity and completely new user experiences.

Augmented reality (AR) adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. Examples of augmented reality experiences include Snapchat lenses and the game Pokemon Go. It involves the integration of digital information with our physical environment in real-time. It has been steadily growing over the past few years, finding its way into multiple areas of our lives. This technology layers virtual enhancements atop our existing reality.

Virtual reality (VR) implies a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world. Using VR devices such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard, users can be transported into a number of real-world and imagined environments such as the middle of a squawking penguin colony or even the back of a dragon. Virtual Reality (VR) is an artificial environment which seeks to synthetically introduce stimuli to the senses. This means that one’s sight, sound, touch, smell, and even taste can be artificially stimulated.  

 An example of AR would be looking at a building and seeing superimposed computer-generated graphics showing you its history. In contrast, virtual reality, or VR, is the computer simulation of 3D environments that allow a user to function within them, such as roaming around and building objects in virtual worlds.

In a Mixed Reality (MR) experience, which combines elements of both AR and VR, real-world and digital objects interact. Mixed reality technology is just now starting to take off with Microsoft’s HoloLens one of the most notable early mixed reality apparatuses.  

 Mixed reality (MR), also hybrid reality, is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualisations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time.