Combining the Real World With the Virtual World: Augmented Reality is Here
February 13, 2010
Blaise Aguera y Arcas, an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, presented the latest augmented reality capabilities of Microsoft’s mapping application at the 2010 TED Talks. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design and is a phenomenal collection of presentations that anyone will find beneficial.
Augmented Reality is now entering widespread adoption with the emergence of powerful smartphones capable of taking geotagged photographs and video, and especially by streaming videos over a 4G cellular network. As online mapping applications become feature-rich and widely used, people will provide their own content in the forms of annotations, photographs and videos. As a result, true telepresence will be possible, allowing a sort of virtual tourism via a computer screen. A user could experience the bustle of a city square at night or the rising sun in a silent desert. Art, hidden shops, and curious city features can be documented and tagged for the benefit of others. A cyclist can mount a smartphone to his helmet and take an audience for a tour of his city in realtime. In the next few years, the possibilities of combining the real and virtual worlds will begin to emerge and be discovered, and it will help to connect and enrich us all.
February 13, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Always consider the dark side of every rosy prediction about the future. Heaven was created. Well, there would just have to be a hell. Watching Avatar I became aware that this immersion of the audience into the movie could have terrible consequences. I get motion sickness. If the scenes had been too ‘enriching’ I would have barfed. But the main reason I would still my enthusiasm is the assumption that technology enriches life. Nothing has been so engrossing to me as the sound of my grandfather’s voice (when I was a young lad) beginning a new tale.
Having said all this I still look forward to these new adventures. Some of them might be fun.
February 13, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Hi David,
There are certainly negative implications as augmented reality comes into widespread use. Privacy concerns are usually first and foremost, however these are always voiced and accounted for whenever the world wide web opens new doors.
I think that augmented reality will be a positive development for the wired world. Riot police might think twice about aggressive action when a group of protesters might be broadcasting live video. Telepresence can give a whole new meaning to the phrase, “the world is watching”. Of course, there are privacy implications and dangers to facial recognition software being used to scan live feeds, especially as mobile video resolution and bandwidth increase. People will need to become accustomed to the idea of being filmed all of the time, such as the citizens of Britain, or they will need to mask themselves. Hats, bandannas, and extremely large reflective face-glasses might become fashionable as a result.
February 18, 2010 at 1:11 pm
[...] technology is able to skew reality. Recently I posted about the advances being made in bringing Augmented Reality to mobile [...]