Augmented reality has changed the perspective to see the world & its entity. It’s a massive revolution in the field of audio-visual. Augmented Reality (AR) gives us an opportunity to view the real life substances or physical environment by augmenting the real elements & entities of the world. It’s a computer generated technology where using various software computer simulates human sensory inputs such as, sound, audio, images, video, graphics and GPS data and produce multi dimensional enhanced objects. Rather than Virtual Reality like simulating a virtual environment of any sort, Augmented Reality (AR) is more like a conventional & meaningful context with an approach of producing real time environmental elements and adding digital information about the real environment. We can say Augmented Reality (AR) is closer to the real world than Virtual Reality (VR).

How it works & technology behind:

Computer graphics and audio-visual technology has become more sophisticated. The up gradation & continues Research & Development in this field is beyond imagination. Using AR, engineers even able to pull graphics out of the TV, Laptop or Mobile screens and & integrate them with the real world environment. In 1990 Thomas Caudell, a researcher first introduced the term Augmented Reality to describe head mounted display of electricians for assembling complicated wiring.  First time in 1998 AR went as a commercial application as ‘first down’ (a yellow line) that appeared in televised football games in USA. It was so basic & preliminary that time, but over the years it got better & better with unimaginable outputs and researches still going on with AR.

AR Apps mainly written in special 3D programs with sophisticated software to tie up the animation, graphics, Sound and other contextual digital information in the software program to overlay it in ‘AR Marker’ of the real world substance. Now if a Mobile App or Browser Plug-in receives the digital info. From ‘AR Marker’ it executes the program or code tied up with the marker and represent the correct image or output. Catchoom CraftAR AR SDK is a largely used Software Development Kit for AR Applications. It is AR Development kit for iOS & Android with Cordova & Unity Plug-in.  QCAR presently known as Vuforia AR SDK is also used for AR development for Mobile devices. Some other used SDK for AR Development are Argon, ARToolKit (open Source), ArUco, JavaCV, ATOMIC Authoring Tool (For AR Development on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X), Goblin XNA etc.

AR Opportunities:

As per many Big Industry CEO’s like Tim Cook from Apple & others not Virtual Reality, but Augmented Reality will rule the Global Business. Actually AR has much larger spectrum of use cases than VR. Because AR is a part of our physical world entity & elements, but VR simulates a virtual world and thrust us into it. AR only enhances & projects the real life substance with sophisticated graphics & digital information. So whatever we experience with AR is related & tied up with our real world. So, it’s pretty obvious that the use cases of AR will have wider range and acceptability in business opportunities than VR. For these reasons Giant Organizations like Apple, Microsoft, Google, HTC, Samsung are investing a lot in AR Development & AR Wearable. People can experience Augmented Reality with the help of Specific Apps & Wearable like, Magic Leap/Meta/HoloLens Glasses.

For example,

Retail: Retailer will showcase their product with AR enhancement. Excess stock maintaining & store size will be reduced which will be cost effective. China has already implemented AR shopping experience as a pilot run. With Magic Leap/Meta/HoloLens glasses you can view & experience every item on the store virtually.

Education: AR will have a big impact on Education Sector. With AR Apps and Wearable we can have an extra ordinary learning experience which will be more interactive, interesting & more impactful.

Medical: Health Care & Medical Research will be most benefited with AR. It is a revolution in Human Health Study & Anatomy.

Tourism: It will open many profitable avenues in Tourism Industry.

Military:  Government Defense Organizations are already using AR for War simulation, Training, Briefing etc.

Industry & Business: Office operations will be more easy & traceable with this, computing will have a different edge & approach. There will be unbelievable evolution in Physical or Tele Conferences & Seminars with AR content & programs.

Like all above, so many other sectors will be highly benefited by AR. It will be a new era where audio-visual experience & other senses will take an epic shape with AR and will be incorporated in Global Industries and also in our daily life.

Some benefits implementing AR in your business:

• Customer engagement & interactivity with your brand and business.
• AR Business Cards with details. (Getting popular & useful in business meetings)
• Brand Presentation & Promotion.
• AR brochure for Company.
• Innovation in your Visual Add & Strategy.
• Social Media Promotions.
• GPS Locator & Map Finding your Business.

And More..

Some Figure & Facts about AR:

Pokemon Go:

Pokemon Go is a AR location based AR game development from Niantic for iOS, Android and Apple Watch devices. It simulates game characters with real live environment & location. It gone viral & became hysteria like among the game players and hit 45 million daily active users.

AR Market Volume:

Market & Business value for AR could go from nothing today to $90 billion by 2020.

World Wide Sales:

Worldwide AR Headset & Wearable sales could go to $1.2 billion by 2017.

Startups for AR:

Almost 737 AR startups were listed on Angel List with a average valuation of $4.7 million. So it’s very clear that industries are seeing definite benefits with AR.

Magic Leap:

Magic Leap is the most valuable AR startup. It will be valued almost $4.5 billion and raised $793.5 million from funding. Magic Leap is reportedly in the process of developing an AR Head Set which will project holographic content & images onto real life environment. Google is one of the Top investors of this project after the massive fail of Google Glass.