Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Are Getting Real
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Thanks to rapid advances in digital technology — and a huge surge in venture funding — virtual reality and augmented reality finally are ready to justify the hype that began nearly three decades ago.
A record $2.3 billion was invested in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) startups in 2016, more than triple the $700 million invested the year before, according to mergers and acquisitions firm Digi-Capital. Funding came from large companies such as Amazon, Alibaba, Intel, and MGM, as well as numerous venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road and elsewhere.
Why such sudden frenetic activity around a space that essentially has been dormant since an initial flurry of hype in the early ‘90s? Because now the technology is there to support VR and AR, though there’s still certainly room for improvement (we’re looking at you, Google Cardboard).
VR and AR are similar, but there are crucial distinctions that determine appropriate use cases and markets for each technology. VR is all about creating an alternative reality in which the user can be fully immersed, usually by wearing a headset running a computer-generated simulation of a “real-life” environment or scenario.
AR, though, combines what can be seen in “real life” with computer-generated enhancements. In other words, unlike with VR, someone using an AR headset isn’t going to trip over the real coffee table in the room. They may, however, be able to see what a unicorn looks like standing on that table.
Steven Levy, founder and editor of Backchannel and a longtime technology journalist, explored the distinctions between VR and AR — along with how each will be embraced by enterprises and consumers — in a recent WIRED Emerging Tech Council online virtual session hosted by TTP.
Right now, VR primarily is a gaming play. “It really is a way that you can take a lot of existing games and augment them by presenting a 360-degree experience,” Levy says, though he adds that there still isn’t a “killer” VR game that will compel consumers to purchase VR hardware. Entertainment industry giants such as Disney and several Hollywood studios also are embracing VR to enhance their products.
While VR still has at least two major issues to overcome — it competes with “real” reality (the bumping-into-the-coffee-table problem) and quality VR experiences require investments in expensive hardware — it’s here now and starting to take off. AR, on the other hand, remains several years away from mainstream adoption, but Levy sees tremendous upside, particularly for enterprises.
“Augmented reality, I think, is leaping ahead now in interest from VR,” Levy says, noting that AR already has something that VR lacks — a killer app.
“Pokemon Go was an augmented reality app,” he says, describing how millions of people in the summer of 2016 “were obsessed with Pokemon Go. They were holding up their phones and walking into the street chasing these little critters.”
“It really did prove that there is an interest and use that draws people in when you layer over something onto the real world,” Levy says.
Beyond games, enterprises are ramping up to use AR for product design, collaboration, and engineering. The flexibility and practicality of AR technologies likely will spur rapid adoption by enterprises, Levy predicts.
Emerging Tech Council members also heard from Arthur van Hoff, CTO and founder of VR company Jaunt, and John Howard, co-founder of AR startup LOOOK.
Rather than focusing on VR gaming, van Hoff said, four-year-old Jaunt has opted to offer people “immersive experiences through storytelling and technology.” Users wearing headsets can “interact” with actors in the videos produced by Jaunt, which range in genre from travel, music, sports, horror, drama, and more.
LOOOK is an AR and “mixed reality” design and development studio that launched a year ago and is focused on enterprise uses, including industrial design, architectural modeling, enhancement of existing tools and workflows, and collaboration.
“Fundamentally we believe in the long run that augmented reality and mixed reality are going to have the greatest impact,” Howard says. “They’re having the greatest impact today in the enterprise space.”
AR and VR in the News
MIT Technology Review examines a new AR headset from a startup that may deliver a “more realistic augmented reality.”
UploadVR Amitt Mahajan writes AR could help prevent people from losing their jobs to automation by enabling them to “perform unfamiliar and complex tasks.”
The Diamondback Jack Roscoe of University of Maryland reports that researchers last week unveiled Augmentarium, AR technology that eventually may help surgeons in the operating room.
Forbes contributor Paul Armstrong explores how big the VR market might get and where it is headed next.
Virtual reality basketball could be the future of sports broadcasting, according to Benny Evangelista in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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