The Web continues to evolve. Recent projections indicate that virtual reality and augmented reality may soon become a major part of web interfaces. We thought it might be helpful to provide a quick overview of these technologies and provide additional resources about the potential impact on the web. As an aspiring or practicing professional, you should be aware of these technologies.
What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual Reality is the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors.
Current VR technology most commonly uses virtual reality headsets or multi-projected environments, sometimes in combination with physical environments or props, to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user’s physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment. This Wikipedia article has detailed information about the technology and its applications.
What is Augmented Reality?
Augmented reality (AR) is a direct or indirect live view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are “augmented” by computer-generated perceptual information, ideally across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory, and olfactory. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive or destructive and is spatially registered with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. In this way, augmented reality alters one’s current perception of a real world environment, whereas virtual reality replaces the real world environment with a simulated one. Augmented Reality is related to two largely synonymous terms: mixed reality and computer-mediated reality. You can find more information about this at this Wikipedia article.
Difference between VR and AR
With virtual reality, you can swim with sharks. And with augmented reality, you can watch a shark pop out of your business card. While VR is more immersive, AR provides more freedom for the user, and more possibilities for marketers because it does not need to be a head-mounted display.
The impact of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
One of the hottest tech trends hitting the market right now is the one concerning Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. Many of us only relate these new technologies to different sorts of video games where it has had is major breakthrough. But the fact is, that these technologies are far more useful than that – and some of your competitors are probably already using it.
The technologies are already useful tools for product development and learning methods. But companies within warehousing, logistics and plain physical stores also has big opportunities using Augmented Reality and Visual Reality in the future. This article explains this impact of AR and VR.
Virtual Reality through Web
In the article written by Joseph Medley (Welcome to the Immersive Web), he explains virtual world experiences hosted through browser. It covers entire virtual reality (VR) experiences surfaced in the browser or in VR enabled headsets like Google’s Daydream, Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality Headsets, as well as augmented reality experiences developed for AR-enabled mobile devices.
Informational Links
We encourage you to check out these articles below. The fact that Firefox is building a new browser for these technologies is a clue as to how rapidly these are anticipated to become mainstream in the Web. We also understand that the next version of WordPress (Project Gutenberg) is anticipating the need for these sorts of interfaces as well.
- Virtual And Augmented Reality Moving Away From Apps, Toward Web
- Go beyond Native with Web-Based VR and AR
- Mozilla: We’re building a new Firefox browser for VR and AR headsets
In this week we focused on VR and AR, the difference between them, VR through web, the impact of VR and AR and finally the applications. We hope you find these resources and overview useful. As a practicing professional, you should have a solid understanding of these technologies and their potential applications. We always look forward to your comments and feedback (whether you are a member or not).
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