Augmented and Virtual Reality

“Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming.’’

— Mark Zuckerberg

With just one Google or YouTube search, you will know the craze of augmented and virtual reality over the years. In the summer after my sophomore year, I got the opportunity to work as an intern in this field. This blog will not only help you understand AR/VR but also in the selection procedure of ArIES (ArIES is Aritificial Intelligence and Electronics Society of IIT Roorkee).

Augmented Reality

According to Wikipedia, augmented reality is a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view. Basically, manipulating the real world in the camera view with the use of augmented 3D objects is augmented reality.

In this picture, a man is coloring the image of Lord Ganesha and if you see in the mobile, there is a real model of Lord Ganesha which is getting colored exactly to the drawing.

Virtual Reality

According to Dictionary, 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.

In virtual reality, a virtual environment is created around you and then you can see the virtual environment and also can interact with it.

Hardware Requirement

For augmented reality, no hardware is required, just your cell phone and the images printed on paper or on any other object.

For virtual reality, a VR Headset is required and of course your mobile.

Software Requirement

Now, there are good number of platforms for making applications related to AR/VR but for beginning, most famous is the Unity 3D with Vuforia extension.

There are also separate plugins for Google VR Headset and some others but those are specific and need not require much attention.

Obviously, you need to have good programming skills and object-oriented programming skills. Programming language used in Unity is C# or JavaScript. I prefer C# because it is more related to C and hence easily understandable.

(Come with the basics of the above described three things if you are preparing for the selection proceduire of ArIES)

Technology

The main technology behind Augmented Reality is the Image Processing (Hey, you got a topic to read. Careful, I won’t be telling you further).

First of all, you need to install Unity 3D which is a known platform for Game Development. Then you need to install Vuforia plugin in unity itself from official site of Vuforia.

When you will open the unity editor, you need to drag and drop the Image-Target from prefab folder to the scene and the 3D object to the scene. You are done to create a fundamental AR app. The best thing about unity is that it is multi-platform i.e. you can build your application for android, iOS, windows, etc. from the same code.

For learning in detail, refer to the links provided at the end.

Now, what Vuforia does that it detects the pre-defined image in the camera view using different image detection algorithms and give the image region to you in the scene to manipulate. At this stage, you need not worry to go deep inside image processing but at least have a good idea about it.

The most commonly technology used for image processing is Computer Vision but again Computer Vision itself is a vast topic and you need to learn OpenCV for it.

For Virtual Reality, we use a pre-build virtual environment in which camera of the scene is usually on the head of the person. So that you can see the virtual surroundings from your perspective.

Now again you can manipulate the objects using your mathematics and programming skills and let the user interact with the virtual reality.

Now, we combine the augmented reality with VR headset and this becomes really amazing !! We split the mobile screen into two parts and show the two parts to your eyes respectively. This gives the perception of depth of the view. The virtual environment is not purely virtual but the mixture of real environment and the virtual objects and you have created what everybody loves.

The important thing about AR/VR is that there is always enough to explore and always there is a room for new idea to implement.

See these videos to get the feel of this tech:

This last video is to be seen by VR headset.

Study Material to help you get started:-

With these links, you can get started to make your own AR/VR applications. You need to have some basic knowledge of programming. If you already have studies any programming language, you can skip first link. If you have basic idea of Object Oriented Programming, you can skip the second link too. The third and fourth links are very important (you can’t skip those).

You need to do at least one of the tutorial from the official site of Unity 3D and then from the last link you will get going for making your application.

Introduction to Computer Science

C# Tutorial

Unity — Roll-a-ball tutorial

Getting Started with Vuforia for Unity Development

For getting any other information regarding the blog, content, selection process or any other thing, feel free to contact me.

“AR/VR at its best shouldn’t replace real life, just modify it, giving us access to so much just out of reach physically, economically. If you can dream it, AR/VR can make it.’’

-Matthew Schnipper

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Artificial Intelligence And Electronics Society

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Artificial Intelligence and Electronics Society (ArIES) is a campus group of IIT Roorkee, with a mission to solve impactful problems of society .

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