EARLIER this year I attended the European Churches Internet Conference in Warsaw. The key topic being discussed was the impact that Virtual, Mixed and Augmented Reality, (Virtual Reality), is about to have on all our lives. Professor Wojciech Cellary of the Information Technology Department of Poznan University of Economics, was one of our guest speakers. He explained that Augmented Reality will in the next ten years become a greater part of our daily lives.
For readers unsure what is meant by Augmented Reality (AR) it is superimposing information on digitally rendered images into real world environments giving a sense of virtual reality or to create an illusion. Images and sounds are superimposed over what users see and hear. Unlike Virtual Reality where computer generated environments are used to interact with human beings and human beings get immersed into them, AR takes the real world of the present and projects digital imagery and sound into it The full implications of how this will influence our physiology and psychology are only just beginning to be explored, while the impact it will have on our day to day living will be immense. The more obvious ones are architecture, education, medicine, then there is marketing and advertising, and the world of entertainment.
Immersive gamification has become a lucrative business, offering experiences in simulators, caves, and of course outdoors. Recently a London company, ‘Improbable’ which is a fledgling technology company received an investment of over $500m to create new Virtual, Mixed and Augmented Reality worlds. The capabilities of the company’s technology to date, has been linked to The Matrix series of films, in which humans plug into a simulated world powered by computers.