Load your Augmented Reality apps into a headset for hands-free demos! (just like 360 VR videos)
Have you seen a 360 video? Sure you have. Awareness about them has been spreading rapidly. Basically Accelerometers and gyroscopes track your viewing devices’ movements and waving your mobile around while watching 360videos has an amazing result, the view surrounds you by responding to your motions.
You’ve seen a 360 video in VR? Probably, or at the very least, you know that Virtual Reality devices can display 360 vr videos as immersive experiences. (360 rotation , not room scale movement like in a VR videogame)
now…… AUGMENTED REALITY
Thanks to Snapchat filters, the game Pokémon Go and Facebook/Apple/Google kicking the whole industry forward in the last few years Augmented Reality apps are gaining popularity.
So far , all of the apps are using the pass-through camera on your device and tracking its movement in space, similar to a 360 video.
But once people realize that, similarly to how you load up a 360 into a mobile VR cardboard (or plastic) viewer, the device can be switched into split-screen when in landscape mode.
This is one of the ways you can enable hands free viewing. Why else do Google Cardboard’s VR viewers have a hole for the pass-through camera?
All of those Augmented reality apps hitting the marketplace right now are about to get kicked up a notch.
Depth perception is a real problem when attempting to use an AR app and a cardboard headset. It’s fun for a demo in your living room: Video games, artwork or just playing with animations, but this setup is far less practical when attempting to wander about. (the fault lies in mobile devices only having one front facing camera rather than 2) So cardboard AR headsets are not ideal for a large variety of uses.
Some AR headset manufacturers have solved this problem by integrating a holographic overlay layer onto some plastic. Your eyes are the two cameras and the AR data is superimposed from your mobile device.
Either way, I imagine that during the next few years more people will have access to cheap hands-free AR sample experiences, using cardboard viewers, plastic headsets and their mobile devices. These are great demo/ introductory experiences, a good primer.
Preparing us all, for what the Future of technology will bring.
