Thoughts on the technology

Augmented Reality is nothing but the technology that superimposes information and virtual objects on top of real world objects. This short tutorial or exercise was my first encounter with developing an augmneted reality application. However, I have been exposed to plenty of augmented reality applications in recent years especially with the rise of social media applications like Snapchat and Instagram. These applications mainly use facial recognition to identify faces and superimpose other images, text or audio to present an altered version of reality. This simple application of AR has already taken the world by storm. Subsequently, the concept of an altered reality really sparked the interest of people all around the world. There is something oddly satisfying about seeing something artificial/imaginary present within a real world environment. I grew up in the 90's along with Ash Ketchum and the world of Pokemon. So being able to replicate the actions of a Pokemon trainer and catch Pokemon in the real world around me helped me realise one of my childhood dreams.

Althought these applications mentioned above seem to use augmented reality for mainly entertainment purposes, augmented reality is being used for all sorts of applications. Augmented Reality is playing a vital role in healthcare. It helps doctors analyse patients correctly and provide real time data that is of great help to surgeons. ARnatomy is an AR application that helps students learn about the anatomy of the body by actually seeing where everything is. AccuVein is another important medical application which shows where the veins are in a patient so that drawing blood won't hurt them. Similarly, it is also being widely used in the education sector to give a more hands on learning experience. It is also widely used in the field of sports to show viewers at home a more in-depth analysis of the game. Therefore, it is easy to see that AR is playing a key role in how we see the world around us.

Having used Vuforia and Unity to make just a basic AR application, it is not possible to me to comment on the entirety of the software. However from the various features that I have used, Vuforia seems like a valuable plugin for Unity especially to make AR applications. The image recognition software is stable as it was able to recognize the piece of paper from a distance. However, the software glitches sometimes and the image does not get recognized. The database of image targets that can be created gives a rating for how augmentable a particular image is which is extremely helpful. I did try to use some custom images but the ratings were very poor. The database can also have custom models. The integration between Unity and Vuforia is extremely easy to use and the only requirement is the key.

In my opinion, an AR application will be much more interactive and give you a more expansive view of the AR world through an AR wearable device. While a phone can function as an AR device, it does not provide the true feeling of AR since the screen through which you can observe the AR world is very small. It is easy to distinguish between reality and alternate reality when viewed through a phone. A phone just acts as a filter for the augmented world. Whereas a Google Glass or any other AR glasses will give a wider view of the entire world. It converts the entire world into an alternate reality. Hence, I believe that using AR glasses is the best way to view an AR application.