Gadgetory

virtual reality and augmented reality they kind of sound like something you need a drug counselor to get through don't they but in fact they're the hottest two technologies going these days let's learn about them so we can compare and contrast what each of them does so they allow you instead of overwhelmed augmented reality is when you look at the real world but it's augmented with additional information or graphics in your view now key to this AR concept is that the things are indexed to a location that means they occupy a relevant place in your view as opposed to moving with your gaze as you turn your head and in many cases you can interact with those visuals that are augmenting your view ar can be had via a phone and one of the many AR apps out there or for higher performance you use dedicated a our glasses know that AR is increasingly being referred to these days as mr mixed reality it's part marketing term and part acknowledgement of a ARS ability to augment the real world while also bringing in unreal elements glasses that augment your view without being indexed to a location and space are better referred to as connected head-up displays now Google glass was the infamous standard-bearer of that sector but more recently views expending blade an impressive set of head mounted displays that include integration of Amazon Alexa to help you drive what's displayed by a voice virtual reality is when the world you're standing in is replaced with a virtual one with some of these everything you see and everything you hear is replaced with something computer-generated now the world that that takes you to can be very naturalistic actually or extremely synthetic and fantastic VR you're surrounded in 360 degrees and the space is three-dimensional now in its most ambitious forms VR places are also navigable as you can move through them and use your hands to manipulate things within them VR can be done as simply as sticking your phone in a literally cardboard head mount or little more upgraded plastic holder but the attention these days is mostly on real-deal head mounted displays until recently these were quite cumbersome and always tethered to either a game console or a high performance PC but more recent versions acknowledged that tethering is going to be a non-starter for a lot of users and instead the new headsets build the electronics into themselves or maybe into a small companion processor you wear on your belt for a pseudo cordless experience the bottom line on AR or VR is that you really have to experience it to understand it and appreciate it it's very hard to read an article or look at a video like this and understand the impact of these they aren't like a lot of other technologies the good news is you've got plenty of time both of these are pretty green and have a long way to go before they hopefully merge into a pretty smooth continuum of abilities whereas right now it can be a little hard for the average user to knit them together let alone find a use case that makes sense to them