Not so long ago, future-minded people enjoyed
making a sharp distinction between "reality"and
"cyberspace".
Back in 1996, when the Web was still a novelty
and relatively few people were online, John
Perry Barlow famously declared that cyberspace
is "a civilization of the Mind... both everywhere
and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.”
Augmented reality sounds horribly theoretical
and abstract, but it's actually very simple:
real life plus topical, relevant, background
information equals something massively more useful
Not to be confused with Virtual reality, Augmented
reality (AR) is an interactive experience
of a real-world environment where the objects
that reside in the real-world are “augmented”
by computer-generated perceptual information.
Basically what the definition is trying to
say, is that reality is a bit boring, so computer
geeks came up with a technology that augments
it.
Makes it better.
More interesting if you will. and see things that are not really there.
At this point, we could talk about how the
AR market is expected to reach $35 billion
in the next years and how the future is bright
for immersive technologies, but we are not
going to mention that.
This is not the goal of this video.
Instead, we are going to be very clear about
what AR is.
Augmented Reality is not Virtual Reality.
The two technologies are not the same.
Virtual Reality is a powerful immersion tool
but requires a VR headset to work.
Augmented Reality only requires the user to
have a mobile phone.
No cables, no headsets, no special equipment.
That means a lot of users can use AR today.
The truth is, Augmented Reality is still a
pretty new technology, so content for it is
still a bit scarce.
But the platforms to share an AR experience
are very much established: You can deploy
AR applications via Google’s Play Store
and Apple’s App Store.
The same way you deploy any other mobile app.
That results in an interesting scenario.
At the moment, AR applications are extremely
hyped,
they are rare (there is not a lot of competition
that uses AR as a marketing tool) and they
can be easily shared to billions of users.
Can you imagine a more perfect marketing scenario
for your company?
