Apple's Next Big Thing: Augmented Reality (bloomberg.com)

Apple is beefing up its staff with acquisitions and some big hires to help design augmented reality glasses and iPhone features, according to Bloomberg. From a report: Apple is working on "digital spectacles" that could connect to an iPhone and beam content like movies and maps, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported on Monday. The Cupertino, Calif.- based company is also working on augmented reality features for the iPhone that are similar to Snapchat, Bloomberg said. To make its augmented reality push, Apple has acquired augmented reality start-ups FlyBy Media and Metaio, and hired major players from Amazon, Facebook's Oculus, Microsoft's HoloLens, and Dolby.

Comments

Re:I knew it

[Dracolytch]

As a VR/AR researcher, I have to disagree. The two are similar technologies, but they have fundamentally different use cases. VR isn't "looking for a problem", the problems are all around. Any area where you want to do fully-immersive experiential training, for example (shock/trauma training on board a Navy vessel / Basic firearms training with any weapon and no risk of injury / cyber visualizations where traditional rules of distance don't always apply). In those cases, VR can often make more sense than AR (where sunlight, clutter, or room geometry may degrade the experience).

Is AR a superset of VR? From a technical standpoint, you could make that claim, but from a design standpoint, that's like saying a heads-up display is a superset of a television. Maybe true, but they're not really used for the same things.

The fact that AR is less likely to make someone motion sick is a great benefit to AR, but it also belies one of the underlying shortcomings as well: AR is not as fully as immersive as VR is right now (The degree of immersion in commodity hardware with a good room configuration is startling). It's unclear if AR ever will be, and if it is, will it just be because it blocks out the real-world?

Consider this:
If you're locally piloting a robot, AR is often more convenient because you can be aware of the robot in the context of your current surroundings. However, when remotely piloting a robot, it's often preferable to get the increased situational awareness from the robot's perspective.

Humans can only pay attention to so many things. Ultimately, it comes down to the design and purpose of communication.