An Introduction to Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

AR (Augmented Reality) & Virtual Reality (VR) applications (apps) both are based on computer simulation of real-life scenarios and environments. The simulation will bear a higher degree of resemblance with whatever will be depicted from real-life, either graphically or sensorially. The phrase 'sensorially' is broader than 'graphically' because it means all things perceptible to your senses I.e. graphics, touch, sound, voice, smell etc. Usually, the degree of resemblance with the original has to be many times higher and much more accurate when it comes to VR in comparison to AR apps.

Look at the video recording of your 100-metre dash from the recent Olympic Games. The first commentary may be in English and when so, since it is, that video will not be very thanks for visiting french. Either changing the commentary to French or adding suitable French sub-titles can make it more pleasant to some French audience. This, in simple terms, is when AR finds its opportunity - augmenting the initial with additional useful info - in our example, substituting French for English and consequently, making the material more valuable on the French-speaking. As another example, look at the video capture of your road accident. Two cars collide over a highway and something is badly damaged. The police might be unable to pin-point which of the two drivers was in charge of the accident by simply viewing the recording. If, however, the recording was pre-processed by an AR application that added mass, speed and direction info. of your cars for the video, then, the one responsible could be established with close to, maybe, hundred-percent certainty.

VR (Virtual Reality), alternatively, is quite different from Hololens. Actually, the 2 only share something in common - computer based simulation. As outlined above, the simulation provided by VR needs to be of these high quality that it must be indistinguishable from reality. Theoretically, this can be impossible. Therefore, for practical purposes, VR only means a college degree of approximation, sufficient to get a user to have a 'live' experience of the simulated environment. Moreover, VR is interactive and responds sensorially, in 'real-time', and only as with real-life e.g. in a VR application, imagine you might be within a forest, getting ready to burn a pile of cut-down bushes and dry leaves. You douse the pile with gasoline. A fox is keenly watching you against a nearby place. You then throw a lighted match-stick onto the pile... the program will respond immediately showing a powerful, quickly spreading fire burning on the pile, its shape occasionally altered from the blowing wind... so when in actual-life... the fox (scared through the fire), must run away - and it does! The program may let you alter the direction, speed and alteration inside the speed from the blowing wind, angle of throw from the match-stick etc. along with the system will respond using the new results immediately! Thus, VR enables one to experiment with real-life scenarios and have sufficiently accurate results in the same way though he/she were inside the desired environment/ place, in person, but time savings, travel & resource costs etc.

VR applications consume awesome numbers of computing power. In contrast, AR applications are certainly not demanding on resources - AR applications run comfortably on cellphones, tablets, contrary-helds, laptops and desktops. Very probably, you might be using a number of AR apps on the Android/ iOS device, today, not understanding it! (e.g. Wordlens, Wikitude World Browser etc.).

The real reason for the real difference is VR apps first must correctly interpret whatever action the consumer performed then 'make out' the appropriate response that the real environment would return, filled with animated graphics, movements in the right directions, sounds and so on and in addition, as per correct physics, math and any other sciences involved. Most of all, 'latency', or even the response time from your application, has to be sufficiently high. Otherwise, the person, who may have come with understandably high expectations, is sure to get so completely put-off he/she might burst by helping cover their a string of unprintable words to the effect "to hell with this dumb thing!'. To avoid such failures, your personal computer (or network of computers) designed with unusually powerful mobile processors, high-fidelity graphics software, precision motion trackers and advanced optics, is needed. And that explains, why.