What Even Is Augmented Reality

November, 2020

You’re designing a city. You want to add another park in there somewhere, but there isn’t any more space. You find a few houses that you could replace with the park, so you reach over the table and grab your 3d virtual houses currently being overlaid over the real world. And you replace them with your park. You take a step back to see your fully virtual 3d city sitting on the table, ready to be built.

What is it?

AR (Augmented Reality) is placing virtual objects in the physical world. This technology is already being used in a few places, but it can change the world.

There are a few types of AR. Let’s quickly go over them.

SLAM 🔨

SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) is an extremely effective way to render virtual images over the real world because it simultaneously maps the environment and finds the sensors' location inside it.

Recognition Based 🔎

Recognition Based AR, also known as Marker Based, uses a camera to identify visual objects or markers. Recognition based AR is useful because it can place markers and move them around. It makes looking at Augmented Objects from many different angles possible.

Location-Based 🌍

Location-Based AR relies on GPS, digital compass, velocity meter, or accelerometer to gather data about the location to overlay images. This is very often used by mobile phones because of all the sensors they have.

Superimposition Based 🦸

Superimposition based AR also uses object recognition (Recognition Based) to entirely or partly replace an object.

How are we using it now?

Currently, there are 2 main ways that AR is being used:

Apps 📱

Snapchat

Snapchat starts by using computer vision to recognize where faces are; then, it uses an active shape model to map out your facial features. Once this is done, it uses Superimposition based AR to add the filters.

Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go uses the GPS inside of your phone to spawn pokemon around you. Depending on the terrain and your location, different pokemon will be spawned for you to catch. Pokemon Go uses Location-based AR to place the pokemon inside of the world.

Glasses👓

Focals

The Focals by North are a lightweight type of AR glasses. There is a micro-projector on the right arm of the glasses and a holographic film inside the right lens. The projector projects rays of light, which are reflected by the holographic lens, directly into your eye. This makes it so no one else can see the projection; only you can.

These glasses are designed to move notifications from your phone into your line of sight. And with Alexa built-in, there are a lot of things you can do.

Microsoft Hololens

The Microsoft Hololens is like the desktop equivalent to AR glasses. With a huge range of features and support for game engines like Unity and Unreal, developers worldwide can develop more content for the Hololens.

If you want to learn more about the Microsoft hololens and what it can do. Watch this video:

Microsoft Hololens Live Demonstration

Currently, many AR applications are for play, but we are starting to move towards making it useful. Opening development to game engines not only allows more games to be created but also useful apps. AR is a really cool technology, and with a bit more effort, it could have the power to enhance our everyday lives.

TL;DR