How far is too far with Augmented Reality?

I have encountered this topic many times but my recent visit to the New York City where AR is being used in immerse mode to see how these tall buildings looked in the past left me curious about its potential benefits.
It's incredible how quickly technology is developing. What was formerly regarded as impracticable is now the truth. Who would have believed we could access the outdoors by merely pressing a button on the living room couch's smartphone?
Landline phones didn't achieve saturation, or the point at which the rate of growth in demand, for nearly a century. While mobile phones took just 20 years to reach penetration. Tablets may move much more quickly, and smart phones are on course to cut that rate in half once more.
What seems to be more challenging and promising, Virtual or Augmented Reality?
Virtual reality roller coasters are more thrilling and exciting while augmented reality is proving to be a highly helpful tool in our daily lives.
As Clay Bavor elegantly describes,
These are different technologies which, while related, are neither mutually exclusive nor entirely competitive. In the long term, I expect the line between the two to blur (an AR device that can generate sufficient opacity can emulate VR, a VR system with cameras to bring in the outside world can emulate AR) but in the near-term they have distinctly different missions.Evolving of technology with glasses. Understanding the real world through camera feed
Internet and reality
A smartphone with a camera is first needed to record reality. Secondly, an Internet connection to access the information layer. Third, the desired app on our phone to tie everything together. The virtual objects are the fourth.
Augmented Reality isn’t just limited to desktops & mobile phones, however, as the rise in wearable tech like Google Glass, a worn-on-head computer with an optical head-mounted display, & smartwatches has brought Augmented Reality much closer to us.
As we walk by stores, buildings, people, and products, this screen displays information from sites like Wikipedia or Google. Suddenly the reality is richer and more interesting. It's coming, but augmented reality has a long way to go. Keeping the eye out for ways that augmented reality adds layers of information to our reality.
The reality that we view with our eyes is wonderful and gifted. But how has it changed in light of our eyes and smartphone camera sensors?
Augmented reality is the cutting-edge technology that expands digital data into the real environment, adding a further layer of knowledge. To replace the actual environment with the virtual one, it does not produce any new artificial environments. Instead, it stands out clearly from the surrounding while also incorporating films, sounds, and images to make it more engaging and aesthetically pleasing.
It is now frequently employed to enhance the immersive viewing experience of natural settings. The surrounding actual environment of the user becomes digital and interactive with the aid of cutting-edge AR technologies like object identification and computer vision, we can view a scene in the actual world with a computer-generated overlay.
The program employs sensors in the goggles to draw the 3D scene from our perspective. The software tricks us into thinking the "virtual" environment is three dimensional by subtly showing slightly different images to each of our eyes.
It works as a combination of machine processing, image reflection and projection and the simultaneous involvement of cameras and sensors. It takes the information of the real world, trying to make a so-called copycat in its virtual world, implements it in the real world with some other features.
What is the current state of augmented reality?
AR is poised to lead the way and is soon becoming a part of our daily lives & is driving a majority of our regular decisions. It is no longer just about the technology; it's about defining how we want to use this new technology to live in the real world and how we will create meaningful moments and experiences that will benefit humanity.
Profoundly said by Tim Cook -
“Think back to 2008, when the App Store went live. There was the initial round of apps and people looked at them and said, ‘this is not anything, mobile apps are not going to take off’. And then step by step things start to move. And it is sort of a curve, it was just exponential — and now you couldn’t imagine your life without apps. AR is like that. It will be that dramatic.”We would see a connection of a smartphone and augmented reality viewing device, with our smart phone serving as the secondary AR display for that phone and our AR glasses serving as the always-connected computer. The "AR" compute components will be moved into a device that is already in our pocket, which will reduce the bulk of the glasses significantly. With the introduction of WiFi 6G as we are already using the 5G in the USA, our phone will be able to communicate with the rest of the world 20X faster.
The glasses will eventually disappear and be replaced with something else, perhaps contact lenses. I constantly use both my home assistant and my smartphone. They'll eventually just become a routine part of my life that I use constantly without thinking. The impact of AR in this form-factor will be significantly greater than that of the smartphone, thus I do believe it will take off significantly. The hardware problems are all being fixed.
There are way too many advantages for it not to take off, and the tipping point is going to happen pretty soon.
The power of AR can inspire our readiness to welcome and implement positive change in the world by enabling us to see, hear, and touch potential realities. Let's commit to and work toward designing for humanity's greatest interests as a whole.
NEVEDTHA VENKATARAMAN
11-13-2022