Why AR > VR

Reality headsets coming from everywhere these days, but they largely fall into 2 categories: Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR). Shortly, here is the key difference:

• VR headsets are meant to replace your reality and transfer you to new, completely artificial world. Oculus Riftis a posted boy for VR headsets
• AR headsets are mend to change (augment) your reality by modifying your visual input. Actually, Google Glass was one of the fist AR headsets, but there are more to come, including Holo Lens from Microsoft and Magic leap from Google

Though both topics are very hyped, I think there is one 2 core difference between those 2 approaches: VR applications are very limited and specific, and AR can be (and I believe should be) a natural addition to our everyday life.

VR has few major use cases, and some of them are quite specific:

• Gaming — it’s where it all started, and where all the hype is. It is definitely very core market, but it is very interesting to see how it will develop
• News — a lot of major news companies exploring VR, and many calling it a new frontier of journalism. Frankly, I think it’s way to early to call for a revolution, even thought potential is there
• Porn —people to not talk about it very often, butlet’s just all admit it’s going to be big
• Others, including remote work and movies

For AR, use cases are not so clear yet (Magic Leap demo focused on games a lot ), but it all going in more or less the same direction: bridging a gap between our perception and all the information we have available. It was original idea behind Google Glass, and with all the imperfection of that problem, it is not going away. Imaging truing new furniture in your home, or having a chat with hologram of your friends instead of Skype call, or being consulted on how to fix that goddamn pipe on the kitchen.

We have to spend a lot of time working our those cases, but I would put all my dollars in the AR basket. Well, maybe, just few bucks for VR porn.