There has been a lot of talk about augmented reality lately… so what is this exactly?

It is an evolving technology that merges 3D graphics in video with real-world elements.  It is a space that involves an interactive experience that features a real-time merge between live video (using video cameras as input devices) and a digital element. AR experiences are for the most part flash based – because the flash player is already installed on most machines. There are three main components that make up an augmented reality experience: recognition, tracking and rendering. And it utilizes motion capture control from a camera, and then interfaces this with information, objects, or interaction between the video.

So what is all this technology doing ? it’s providing a new way of interaction.

Augmented reality could be amazing!
Right now it’s being used with with fixed web cameras for the most part, but in the near future when it gets ported over to mobile devices we should see some very useful interactions. A mobile phone could be a portal to information physically linked to real world places and objects. We could see informative videos and links super-imposed over places that we are viewing in real life. Or what about instructional diagrams being overlapped over parts of an IKEA bookcase to bring the 2D drawings off a sheet of paper onto actual objects. We could overlay any object over our own bodies that would enable us to virtually “try on clothes” and actually see what it would look like on us through AR.

There are currently some things designed with AR for smart phones whereby your phone becomes a viewer that affixes images, text and video to real places. Another tool is one that lets users tag their own information to places and things and users can leave comments on the world surroundings, potentially transforming environments into a giant, 3D social network.

This Augmented reality thing has some real potential – and it could be one of the future ways we interact with our environment. Once it is refined and if it can become seemlessly blended with our lives, we see this thing being amazing! Wether it is called AR in the future or not.