INTERACTIVE & REALTIME MEDIA
Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality are buzz words for new concepts to visualize applications or games. To be honest, they are not very new at all.
Augmented Reality has been around since the 90‘s, Virtual Reality was the theme of the movie „Tron“ from 1982.
Whereas in those days these concepts were heavily limited by a lack of mobility, (e.g. due to cables or just the hardware being enormously huge), today it is technically possible to show this content smoothly on computers as small as smartphones or tablets.
„Augmenting“ means extending existing content. So, Augmented Reality is all about adding content on top of things in the real world.
There are different ways to achieve this. The most common is based on a device’s camera. On the display of a smartphone or a tablet, the viewer sees what its camera records. But this is extended with virtual content. The page of a magazine for instance, AR products could virtually jump out of it and be revealed to the viewer.
Virtual Reality is about immersing oneself fully in another world. Goggles which cover the entire visual field are worn, cutting the viewer off completely from the real world and showing only a 360° virtual environment.
This allows the viewer an experience so intense that when the goggles are removed, reality takes a few seconds to kick back in.
The term Mixed Reality describes a mix of both worlds, Augmented and Virtual Reality.
While AR is not the full experience – just look away from your smartphone and it’s obvious that the virtual content is not really there – MR aims at giving you the full experience, similar to VR.
Using transparent googles, Mixed Reality allows the real world to be mixed with content from the virtual world. Here the real and virtual world merge completely.
We at unexpected IRM work with all these technologies. However, we always choose wisely which technology best suits our customers‘ needs.
Feel free to contact us to find the best solution for you or just come by and try out these technologies for yourself.