A Vision of Realism — Augmented Reality

We all are familiar with these rectangular slabs of glass, made of aluminium, silicon and oxygen, ionizing the ideologies and character of the youth, wired with interest, causing a heavy toll of time, vision and mind. These myths regarding smartphones are roaming around us, whether it is an idyllic city of Mianwali or the city of excellent glare and shine Las Vegas, this hypothesis seems to bother almost every person and parent on the planet. Despite these “unauthorised” statements, the advancement in its technological components is a prologue to the new mysterious and miraculous gadgets. Augmented reality is just the parodos to the prologue.

Augmented realism, formally known as augmented reality (a term by Tom Caudell) is a technology that displays a computer-generated image in an actual environment, on the screen of a phone or on a virtual reality or augmented reality headset. A person can foresee mythical creatures or actual creatures running and playing with him in a reality mixed and mashed with augmented imagination. The first major augmented reality device was not a phone or a headset, it was a screen which displayed projected and interacted shadows, created by Myron Kueger in 1974. The project was named as Videoplace. Recently, a game called Pokémon Go has shown the world how augmented reality can affect the gameplay in general. The potential of AR is not only limited to gaming or in Snapchatious industry, but it also holds a massive approach towards serious technical as well as domestic assistance. But at first, let us explore how this technology works.

AR on a phone uses a combination of GPS Coordinates, cameras, sensors and the internet to create a 3D image on the screen. Special instructions are given to the processor of the phone to turn the camera on and recognize the spaces and objects (for example your face in Snapchat) either through the database of the internet or through the local process. It may also use the magnetic, gyroscopic, GPS, proximity and other sensors in your phone to determine of which height, of what size and on which surface, the 3D graphics have to be overlayed. After determining where to load a certain AR object, the phone requests the 3D projections from the internet or from the phone’s internal or external storage medium. Consequently, the AR effects or graphics are displayed on your phone’s screen. The working process on an AR headset, for example, Microsoft HoloLens is not different. The main difference is the AR effect on an AR headset is displayed on a transparent screen. The user can interact with the effects through the gestures of his hands or fingers.

Augmented realism is widely used in smartphones to simplify daily tasks. For example, if you are familiar with Google Lens, you may have tested or used the translate feature to translate what is written on the objects in real-time by just using your phone’s camera. This technology may be helpful to view the approximate position of the moon in areas that are covered by clouds or to pull up a virtual scale to measure the height of buildings (or any other article) or the length of a certain object or to assist in the field of engineering by displaying virtual instruments etc.

The future of augmented realism looks promising. It is, no doubt, an expensive technology and its cost is sure to reduce as it makes its way towards the budget smartphones (according to the average budget in Pakistan).

Sources

1. https://www.quora.com/What-material-is-used-for-smartphone-screens

2. https://www.colocationamerica.com/blog/history-of-augmented-reality

3. https://www.cramer.com/story/how-pokemon-took-over-the-world-again/

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.