The New World of Augmented Reality

Everyone's talking virtual reality nowadays. It’s all good when you can recreate scenarios like a roller-coaster ride, para gliding or any sort of craziness. This is all good but only when you are with your computer. What about the real world? Augmented Reality is adding imagination and information to your existing world that was not there otherwise, thanks to the viewing devices that you can wear almost everywhere. AR has been around for a few decades. Its evolution started with the invention of the head-mounted display by Ivan Sutherland and Danny Cohen as an academic research project in 1968. After many efforts to expand the concept of VR, the idea of AR was suggested in 1990.

There is a variety of AR-enabled smart glasses which offer significant opportunity for hands-free access to information for those who are engaged in the physical world. The technology represents the amalgamation of two environments the physical and the virtual, which is going to enhance the human experience. However, there are many hurdles for the adoption for Augmented Reality. It is limited to a highly fragmented ecosystem of hardware platforms and some operating systems. It hugely lacks in sharing data and supporting interactions. The wearables allow the user to access the information visually or audibly which helps the user’s task more efficient.

This huge leap that has been made from Virtual Reality towards Augmented Reality also has some pros. Virtual Reality allowed the user to wear the glassed and then they are confined to what is shown to them in those glasses. On the other hand using Augmented Reality wearables allows a user to see through the glass which makes it easier for them to interact with virtual and physical with an ease, allowing one to move physically in the environment.

There are numerous organisations investing millions of dollars into developing top notch wearables which can be used seamlessly throughout the day without causing any strain on the users. This competition has made it more compelling for the companies to provide their cream products to the customer. Not only commercially, these wearables have been used by various armed forces for enhancing their efficiency and performance in the battleground. Various companies like Vuzix, ODG, Epson, Sony, Microsoft etc. have been providing smart glasses for a long time.

In case, of taking over the smart glasses world, Vuzix has proved to be the best with providing its first see-through smart-glasses, the STAR 1200, in August 2011. It took the industry by storm at that time and launched its successor the Smart glasses M100 in the year 2013 and now are prepared to for other two upgrades the Smart Glasses M300 and Smart Glasses M3000 with Advanced Waveguide Optics.

Osterhout Design Group (ODG) thinks people are ready to start donning hologram glasses. This wearables company is known for its industrial and medical heads up displays. The R-8 and R-9 won’t fool anyone into thinking you’re wearing Oakleys, they are compact and cheap.

The R-8 and R-9 are both powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Chip, they both on Android Nougat (Reticle OS). Like the Microsoft HoloLens, they have six-degree-of-freedom tracking, as they place digital items in real space than just slapping a flay overlay across the plane. It comprises of a 13-megapixel front-facing camera that can record 4K video in 1080p.

On the other hand, the Microsoft HoloLens is not that pocket-friendly costing a whooping $3000 while its competitors are just offering their products at just $1600. There’s a huge difference in the price range.

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