Today in this article, we are going to learn about Virtual Reality, Augmented and Mixed Reality.
Much has been said in recent years about the potential that different types of reality offer in many sectors. Areas such as medicine, architecture, tourism, education or video games rub their hands at the panorama of new possibilities offered by this technology to improve their day to day. In addition, the fact that the world’s leading technology companies are investing and experimenting with these advances puts us on the track of what is to come.
Virtual reality is today the environment that is developing the most given its commercial and social acceptance. However, not all experts believe that this environment will continue to be the main reference in the coming years. There are those who see in augmented reality even greater possibilities and especially those who defend that the mixed will be the undisputed queen in our lives in less than five years.
But what do each of these sciences contribute and how are they different?
Table of Contents
Virtual Reality (VR)
Immersion with Virtual Reality is total. Any type of reference to the physical environment disappears and we immerse ourselves in a computer-generated environment capable of recreating any type of space. Do you want to walk through the Moria mine of the Lord of the Rings? Put on some Oculus and you’ll feel like one of the Company of the Ring.
To be able to enjoy this environment it is necessary to use helmets or virtual reality glasses, although there are also other devices for walking around the house such as Cardboard, cardboard glasses developed by Google with a cost of just € 2. To increase the feeling of immersion, some elements have been developed to improve the experience, such as gloves or suits, specially developed to achieve greater interaction with the environment and a feeling of realism.
Augmented Reality (AR)
It consists of placing a layer of information superimposed on the real vision captured by a technological device, such as the camera of our smartphone. Imagine that you are going through the centre of London, you take out your mobile, point to the street and voalá! you have all the tourist information in the area, the number of buses that pass or the restaurants and shops with their corresponding ratings.
The negative part is that it is still quite green and it is common that it has synchronization errors.
Mixed Reality (MR)
It is also known as hybrid reality since it combines virtual reality, augmented reality and physical reality in real-time, thus multiplying its possibilities. In this way, new spaces can be created where both real and virtual objects/people interact.
It seems that it is the trend where technological development will go in the coming years. Proof of this is the development of specific devices for this technology, such as the Hololens developed by Microsoft. Here you have a video to give you an idea of what is to come
It is difficult to venture to say if it will be virtual, augmented or mixed reality that will end up prevailing in the coming years, but what is clear is that our way of interacting with reality and fiction will change radically. Some venture to compare it with the radical change that the irruption of smartphones in our lives meant and there are those who go further and speak of a second digital revolution like the one we are experiencing with the arrival of the internet. In any case, if you are a lover of new technologies, you have to closely follow these advances and we will tell you about them.
