AR vs VR and What It Means for Your Brand
AR (Augmented Reality) is in the marketplace, currently in the GPS and compass based way with additional Info applications.
The main point of AR is to take a clear set of glasses between you and the environment and through mediated reality, superimpose graphics (VR)/Objects (live camera 360 or rendered).
VR (Virtual Reality) is still driving innovation and will be a piece of the AR tech, especially in the filming of 3D and 360 formats for education, movies and advertising. This is evident that as AR gets better, still a safe 1 or 2+ years away, the video game companies will use rendered current VR applications and place the person inside the game through AR device. However, a real world experience (In camera) would feel that much more immersive for people, thereby creating a need for having live camera capture in 3D and 360 as part of the overall solution... that is, till we have implanted chips in our head that does everything, haha!
Conclusion: VR 360 is still a viable money maker and still exploding for the next 1-3 years, while AR applications, technology and content gear up for consumers closer to 2020 and beyond.
Perhaps hitting the low laying fruit of VR 360 and using that to immerse and desensitize the overwhelming feeling of being in a new environment for the current clients, will do a few things:
Help AR technology get better through VR 360 innovation and its foray into marketplace.
Educate the users on VR today so when they move into wearable AR clear glasses in the future, they will be used to the wow factor, having only adapt to a more immersive AR interaction.
The final AR form will seem to want to incorporate tactile technology of some sort (Hand and body mapping and tracking in space). The first bleeding edger’s are starting to offer Green screen replacement/MOCAP based solutions currently, not exactly for AR scape but getting ready for it.
So the overall AR experience is a bit away, the VR 360 Bridge is still here, there are theme rides at Six Flags already with Samsung Gear VR in conjunction with a ride. Pushing the in camera capture to integrate into Advertising, Movies, Education is a great opportunity for both production and post production today while integrating AR as R&D till we have viable niche to pursue and keep sustainable.
Next week, we give a very brief history of AR and some Companies leading the way in AR…
Post 2:
AR History and More:
Steve Mann is the father of AR. LAYAR from Netherlands use GPS and compass: so you can point your cell phone at a sign and it will tell you info about it. There is also Atheer an AR start-up, working on integrating with Android and make a 3D typing app in air. Par Works, does data overlay for AR. Blippar is a phone based AR app that you point to an ad or sign for information.
Intel is making an Industrial based product for AR, so it does not want to compete with consumer product of Google glass (fizzled out, but spurning new tech) and Hololens (coming soon).
AR from what we read after the wow factor stuff is taken away seems it will be a day to day common use, i.e. at grocery stores or in foreign country looking at signs and menus, etc...
Whereas entertainment, education and the like will have a combo of AR and VR 360 used to really put you in the AR action.
Company called Total Immersion, does baseball card AR overlays. There is a human Pac man, which gives you motion of AR, but you must still wear a headset. A Canadian company, EH, has sold AR tech to the US military, they are called Arcane Technologies.
So yes, the future is AR, but 3D and VR 360 will still serve a part and currently is the space to be in.
Let us look at a few limitations and not get caught up in all the glory. GPS is a large part of AR and currently we get 30ft or 9 M. Cell phones have a small screen and will not be the great final home for AR, more likely glasses of HMD companies will revolutionize and perhaps make cell phones extinct in the future? The graduation into AR, will impose a Too Much Information and social etiquette/privacy issues, and we think people will eventually learn to use it, like TV’s/video game consoles/cell phones, in some final way, some author’s point towards a day to day sparingly used for real world applications.
Entertainment, education, advertising verticals will get a huge impact of positive use from AR landscape “For Sale” in the mediated reality, which could be something to look at in conjunction with post production, and AR experimentation facility/ landscape production via 3D and 360? People feel we will, have 20/20 AR Vision by 2020, catchy phrase but is it true to have the complete answer, time will tell.
Next week we shall discuss the definitions of VR and AR and how 3DE will move forward today/tomorrow…
Post 3:
A Lot of People Talk About VR, AR and 3D 360. Let Us Define Each Simply.
VR (virtual reality) is mainly language used for the video game sector as a LIVE render in a program like UNITY. The other side of VR is 360 spherical shooting with cameras (In camera) which people call 3D 360 as a blanket term or just VR. 3D is true visual depth obtained from using 2 cameras to mimic your eyes, whereas monoscopic 360 uses 1 camera to give a 2D version of the environment, and is the norm for majority of people shooting VR today.
In the VR scape, you use a head mounted device (HMD) as an inexpensive tool to view the content. Whether it is a computer based Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or a cell phone based HMD like the Samsung Gear VR, you are transported to a different world. You are in a closed environment and you cannot see the outside world around you. You can only view the world in which you are immersed.
Due to the heavy second screen (Mobile phones and Tablets) environment of today’s demographic; the online world of access to content is replacing the model of cable based subscriptions of old. This allows VR and 3D 360 to be seen in 2D based versions on your phone without any HMD which still provides a wow factor, just not the entire 3D jaw dropping version of the content. So, allowing a entry point for anyone owning a device has solved the majority of viability market problems for this technology.
Now we go to AR (augmented reality) which is something that is being developed and somewhere consumer access within the 2 year term and the big person there is Microsoft with the HoloLens, Google tried Glass and the other player is Google backed Magic Leap.
AR will take a 3D object, what we call volume grab (meaning the entire dimension of the object is captured and not just 1 angle), and we place that 3D object into a mediated reality which is on your device such as the Hololens. This differs from VR such that AR allows you to interact with your current environment. Let me give you an example to explain: you are in your office, you put on the Hololens glasses, and you click a program to play a detective game/educational module on detective studies. Then on your wall in front of you desk a 3D object is placed there in the form of a fuse box, you eye activate the box and eye activate the lever, then in your other wall across the desk a hole blows out in your wall and you see the clue. Your wall is fine, but the mediated environment of 3D objects placed there gives you the MIXED REALITY of seeing your room and objects that are not there.
The final solution whether it is for Education, Movies, TV, Advertising and Corporate uses, looks like objects of 3D and 360 spherical capture and VR elements with VFX and CGI to produce a fully immersive and interactive AR/VR platform to move the world in a different and disruptive way as far as media and how we consume it is concerned.
Many people build technologies such as software and hardware and accessories and cameras and yet there is still the lack of one main thing: Content. It is in that realm of content production that 3D Evolution (3DE) will forge ahead. We shall implement cost savings measures for production of content while at the same time levering the new and pioneering field of VR today and AR in the future as it blends with VR when the timing becomes more consumer centric and accessible.
As far as our take on VR, AR, 3D, technologies and CGI/VFX blend. We are implementing associations, technologies and workflows to reduce the overall cost to productions in various filming mediums (TV, Movies, Education, Advertising and Corporate) by producing a 1 stop shop scenario.
At 3DE’s 1 stop shop location we will have various production based solutions from projection mapping, motion capture(MOCAP)/mapping and tracking/green screen, 360/misc. equipment, 360 stitching/post production and camera rentals to allow productions to consolidate as much of their production to 1 location to save time, money and scheduling, thereby reducing overall budget, while getting the most advanced technology at affordable pricing in comparison to current shooting based budget requirements.
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