As technology develops, they might resemble one another and blend into one another, but they are actually two separate concepts with distinctive qualities that set them apart.
In our blog post, we’ll provide a basic overview of both technologies while highlighting some applications where they are necessary.
What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual reality refers to a technology where headsets like the HTC Vive Cosmos, PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest, and Valve Index completely immerse the user in a virtual environment. These headsets are opaque and, when worn, block out the user's physical surroundings, giving the impression of being somewhere else.
The user's full field of vision is filled with the virtual environment when the headsets are turned on because the LCD or OLED screens inside them are refracted by lenses.
This may take the shape of a game, a 360-degree film, or the interface's virtual environment. In essence, the headset immerses the user in a virtual environment, substituting their real surroundings.
Tethered virtual reality (VR) headsets, such as the Index and PS VR, and standalone VR headsets, such as the Quest 2, utilize six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) motion tracking technology.
This technology is enabled through external sensors or cameras (in the case of the Index and PS VR) or outward-facing cameras (for the Quest 2).
With the use of this cutting-edge technology, the headsets can track the user's motions as well as the direction they are facing.
Users may move about and interact with virtual items in a virtual space when paired with 6DOF motion controllers.
Even though the virtual environment is typically only a few square meters in size, the experience is incredibly immersive and compelling. To prevent stumbling over the cords connecting the headset to the computer or gaming system, it is crucial to take care.
Virtual Reality in Action:
In the context of both games and applications, virtual reality has the ability to transport users to alternate locations, rendering their physical surroundings irrelevant.
Within games, the user may find themselves seated in the cockpit of a starfighter, while applications may allow users to embark on virtual tours of distant locations, providing a sense of presence as if they were physically present in the remote location.
Virtual reality offers limitless potentialities, all of which involve the replacement of the user's immediate environment with an alternative, virtual one.
What Is Augmented Reality?:
In contrast to virtual reality, augmented reality enhances the user's vision by adding to it. AR technology is utilized in devices such as the Microsoft HoloLens and other smart glasses designed for enterprise-level applications.
These devices are transparent, similar to a weak pair of sunglasses, allowing the user to see their surroundings clearly while projecting images over whatever they are looking at.
Additionally, AR apps and games, including popular titles such as Pokemon Go, leverage the camera on the user's smartphone to track their environment and overlay additional information on the screen.
AR displays have the potential to provide a wide range of features, from simple data overlays that display the time to complex holograms that appear to float within a physical space.
Pokemon Go, for example, projects a Pokemon on the screen, superimposed over the user's surroundings. Similarly, the HoloLens and other smart glasses permit users to virtually place floating app windows and 3D objects within their immediate vicinity.
When it comes to visual immersion, augmented reality falls short of virtual reality. While AR apps only display on a smartphone or tablet screen, and even more advanced AR devices like the HoloLens can only project images in a small area in front of your eyes, VR technology completely replaces your field of vision.
As holograms vanish when they leave a specific area, this can result in a lack of immersion, and users may find it challenging to concentrate on small screens while trying to imagine objects in front of them.
While basic AR applications can work with three degrees of freedom (3DOF), most AR applications require six degrees of freedom in order to track the user's physical position and maintain consistency in the images projected in 3D space.
Devices like the HoloLens use advanced pattern recognition and stereoscopic cameras to track the user's position, while smartphones with advanced AR capabilities may use multiple rear-facing cameras to track depth.
Despite its limitations, augmented reality has many possibilities, especially in terms of practical applications.
AR software on smartphones has been providing additional information about surroundings for years, such as live translations of text or pop-up reviews of nearby restaurants.
Dedicated AR headsets, like the HoloLens, allow for even more possibilities, such as the ability to place apps as floating windows around the user, essentially creating a modular and multi-monitor computing setup.
At present, the use of AR is mainly confined to smartphones and lacks the visual enhancement capabilities of AR displays that are intended for enterprise-level use. Consequently, the potential of AR is still largely constrained unless a consumer-grade AR headset is introduced.
AR vs VR: The Difference:
Virtual reality and augmented reality are two distinct technologies that achieve their purposes in distinct ways, despite the similarities in their devices' designs. VR can transport the user away from reality and into a new one, while AR adds to reality by superimposing information on top of the current environment.
Despite the fact that both are potent technologies, neither has yet attracted a sizable following among customers. That probably has to do with the exorbitant costs needed to scale the use of both.
Most notably, AR and VR apps can be developed for various platforms, such as smartphones and PCs, but the process of developing AR apps is different from developing VR apps.
Although both platforms require 3D content development, the experiences of the apps differ. Developing AR and VR on the same platform would still require different software development kits.
An AR SDK provides the capability for the app to detect and capture real-time user environments before overlaying pre-loaded 3D content over those captured environments.
The final view is then generated, allowing users to navigate and interact with the mixed reality environment.
VR SDKs allow the app to stream pre-loaded or cloud-stored scenes and allow users to navigate them using controllers.
User and environment tracking is made possible through sensors, haptics, and cameras. There are various platforms for developing AR apps, such as Vuforia, ARKit, ARCore, Wikitude, ARToolKit, Spark AR Studio, Amazon Sumerian, HoloLens Sphere, Smart Reality, DAQRI Worksense, and ZapWorks.
Some of these platforms combine VR with AR, while some VR app development kits are exclusively for developing VR.
Talking with others and interacting with them in real time are not far-away possibilities anymore. Thanks to AR and VR, the future looks full of interesting possibilities, many of which bode well for humanity at large.
To Sum Up:
The way we interact with digital information is undergoing a transformation due to the powerful technologies known as virtual reality and augmented reality.
While AR enhances our experience by overlaying digital data in the real environment, VR fully replaces it, transporting us to different worlds. More work is required before consumers start adopting virtual and augmented realities in large numbers.
The development of AR and VR will undoubtedly undergo many transformations, and the effects awaiting the world at large will be very interesting.
These innovations undoubtedly have the power to completely transform the way we use computers and engage with the outside world. We may expect more improvements in the years to come thanks to VR and AR's bright future.
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