What is Augmented Reality (AR) in practice?
AR is such a misunderstood term! Here’s a simple and practical definition in plain English with visual examples, for people who are getting started with it.
A non-fancy definition: Augmented Reality (AR) means bringing digital content in to what we see of the real world.
Please note: the boundaries of the term AR are blurred, sometimes controversial. For example, I am focusing here on the visual side of AR, but, in its more general meaning, AR does not only refer to sight, but also to other senses (e.g. haptic technology for touch). For a comprehensive introduction to it, please check this Wikipedia article.
Let’s analyse the three parts of the simplified definition above to learn better what they mean and get a general feeling for their boundaries:
“What we see of the real world”
Currently, despite the massive progress on holographic technologies, there’s only a few practical ways of modifying (“augmenting”) what we see. The most important ones are:
Mobile AR: devices with a screen and a camera, typically smartphones, that allow us to see on screen the portion of the real world the camera is seeing (so that it seems that you are seeing the world through the device).
AR glasses: see-through devices that are similar to glasses, e.g., Nreal, Spectacles, Hololens and Magic Leap; For simplicity, the term AR devices is used as a general one that includes AR glasses and Mobile AR devices.
Taking all this into account, in practice, “what we see of the real world” is not “everything we see with our naked eyes”, but rather “what we see of the real world through our AR devices”.
“Bringing in”
In general, this means that something digital (see “Digital content” below) visually appears in your sight of the real world (see “What we see of the real world” above). Most people wouldn’t consider a piece of digital content that is fixed in a specific position of the screen or see-through glass regardless of how you move yourself or your AR device to be proper AR. For example, the record button in your camera app is not considered AR, even though it is overlaid on the real view. For it to be considered AR, the position of the digital content needs to be dependent on what you are actually seeing. Typical examples would include 3D animals that are digitally on the real floor that the camera sees, or digital bunny ears that come out of our real heads. As they are anchored to real things, we say they augment those real things with digital stuff that doesn’t exist out of that AR device — they augment reality.
Newer and more sophisticated types of AR not only enable digital content to be brought into what you see, but also enable it to interact with real elements, e.g., a digital ball that bounces off real walls and objects that your camera is seeing.
“Digital content”
What are those 3D animals or bunny ears that I am talking about? Yes! They are pieces of digital content. In fact, many types of digital content can be used in AR. For example:
Text: some apps replace the text you see in real life, like commercial signs, labels, etc. Here, the digital content is simply text!
Visual effects: easy, like the glitter that appears around your face. More advanced AR can apply these visual effects to specific objects or following the geometry of what the camera is seeing.
Overlaid images or video: also a classic use of AR, you can overlay images or video on top of what the camera is seeing. This is extensively used to make art or printed work (like business cards) be animated, like newspapers and paintings in the Harry Potter stories.
3D objects: all types of 3D objects can be integrated in AR, from a simple arrow showing you a direction (as if the world was a map) to a high quality piece of furniture or the 3D animals that we mentioned above.
Human content: as for any other media, content focused on people is key for AR and will likely become more important as the technology evolves. Volumetric video is the technology that enables the capture of native AR content directly from real-life people (like normal video does for traditional media).
What is AR for you?
Would you define AR in a different way? Is there anything important missing in this plain-English definition? What would you add or change? Let us know in the comments and please share your claps if you liked it!
