An animation movie wins your heart for making the characters lively; a digital tool gains popularity for helping us create realistic scenes, and most digital products we applaud are for the realistic look it has brought in. Is it not? So, what do you think the digital consumers look out for? However big the digital medium expands to, consumers always expect a more realistic output in the digital, virtual world.
Though it sounds little ironical, yes, that’s what our industry always walks towards: making the virtual world realistic. Only towards this goal, our animation and VFX world has seen so many revolutionary advancements, from 2D drawings to 3D animations, matte painting, clay animation and so on. So what next?
It is Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Though these terms are mostly heard together, they both are quite different in technology, usability and experience. Here’s what you should know about their differences.
| VR | AR |
| Creates a completely-immersed digital world that users can interact with |
Is a blend of virtual reality over real life |
| Gives a par real time experience of travelling to a different world |
Enhances real-time experiences by adding virtual components, such as digital images, graphics, or sensations as a new layer of interaction over the real world |
| Is usually delivered to the user through a VR helmet or goggles that are head-mounted and/or a hand-held controller |
Involves a see-through headset that allows users to simultaneously interact with their actual physical environment in the real world (for example: product diagrams for repair technicians) |
| Totally cuts off the viewers from real life and lets them interact in an imaginative environment |
Is being used more in mobile devices, such as laptops, smart phones, and tablets to change how the real world and digital graphics interact |
| Better for video games and social networking in a virtual environment |
Best for marketing, education and training |
| Problems of motion sickness is recorded by some VR users |
No physical hazard recorded till date as it does not take away the users completely from the virtual world |
Sample Augmented Reality:
Courtesy: www.mobiletouchtoronto.com
Sample Virtual Reality:
Courtesy: www.pcadvisor.co.uk/
Courtesy: Newsroom.fb.com
Know the technologies better and work ahead to augment your products!