Virtual world meshes with real world

Recently, I did a movie review on ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ In it I spoke of how little of the movie was actually real and how the vast majority of it was state-of-the-art CGI. In a world like the one we live in today, things everywhere seem to be getting less real and becoming more fake, virtual or intangible. And there is a new technology out that has just recently been getting more attention and improvements that could make our world even less solid. It is called augmented reality.

 

Augmented reality is defined as somehow viewing the real world with computer-enhanced details or objects. A common place where augmented reality (or AR for short) has been used for quite a while is televised football games. That yellow first down line projected on to the field that everyone knows isn’t really there if they were to actually be at the game? That yellow line is a good example of AR. Augmented reality is just reality overlayed,through computer aid, with…something that isn’t reality.

 

There are quite a lot of other applications of augmented reality that get used but may not be so big in the news. It gets used in aiding the military or in entertainment and education (such as in museums). The viewers just need a medium with which to see it. This medium can come in the form of a head-mounted display, a projection or a handheld device.

 

What handheld device does just about everybody have these days? An iPhone or iPod Touch or some other modern phone. These phones are perfect for using augmented reality applications. In fact, I’ve seen some apps recently that are games that utilize AR; lay out some objects certain objects on a table, and position an iPhone over them. Through the iPhone’s camera and its technology it will produce and overlay virtual objects that appear to be interacting with the real world.

 

Then there are the more practical applications. Imagine going to some ancient ruins somewhere deep in the jungle that are hundreds of years old. Then imagine simply holding up an iPhone or similar device and suddenly being able to see what the ruins looked liked long ago. Scientists can reconstruct ruins in computer graphics programs; it just takes the technology of augmented reality to make it that much more fascinating.

 

In my opinion, augmented reality could produce some interesting things. From my understanding it is almost like having hallucinations (by whatever cause) except that it is real and people can understand that it is real and not have to suffer any bodily damage or otherwise. In a few years, we could be living in a world that is vastly virtual: our television screens, advertisements, books, games, and more. All those fancy projection screens seen in the movies that were previously only achievable through computer animation could become reality–in an augmented way.