Window on the world
AR display device
There are other possibilities; such as a projector to provide on overlay directly onto the surface you wish to augment, or even the most common one of all, a television or monitor which supplies quite neatly a view of reality via a remote camera and also the power to display graphic information depending upon what’s added by the production team in their broadcast studios or your computer hardware. Beyond the visual world, you could also have devices for other senses such as a glove or earpiece which could supply more information to both the sense of touch or hearing. Whatever the case, there needs to be something in between your organic senses to allow them to translate an unseen stimulus from the environment into something you can detect.
Data
The first is that it could be a local source of information. In other words a database stored somewhere on the AR user. More likely in this day and age is the second option, and that’s using that great source of freely accessible data that is the Internet. We could be talking about something very specific such as the information on Wikipedia or it could be a more complex application pulling in data from a variety of places such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter to, perhaps, offer face recognition based on photographs followed by whereabouts, telephone numbers, status updates and likes and dislikes - all from information shared on these social networks. Of course, the data doesn’t have to be free if it’s on the Internet. It could be something stored in the cloud but still secured and private and only accessible to certain people. That way it’s still information that can be accessed from anywhere without having to walk around with a hard disk strapped to the user’s back. However, if you wish to wear that backpack or keep all the data on your mobile phone, then that’s okay too.
Connection
In many ways, this is actually the best solution because the connection is both quick and reliable. The limitation is that it’s rather impractical on the mass user level, so heading into the future the connection that we’re talking about is a connection - usually wireless - to the Internet. That’s either going to be over a local network to a router, via Wi-Fi if in a more controlled environment, but more probably if AR is really going to kick off in a big way, it’s going to be need to be done over something further reaching and more ubiquitous in the shape of the mobile broadband network; be that over HSDPA, LTE, Wi-Max or whatever the best available technology is at the time. Naturally, the downside here is that the user is relying heavily on coverage and speed of connection for a consistent AR experience as well as the servers at the other end being in good shape too. Thankfully, all of this is getting better as time goes on and, although it might seem like the weak link at the moment, it’s not, in fact, the area that’s holding AR back, but more on that later in AR Week.
Application
One way around the recognition part of the equation is by using GPS to track the user’s position instead of having to rely on the software correctly identifying your surroundings, based on a view of information through the lens on your cameraphone or whatever it may be. The issue there, though, is that you need the positional information to be dead on, as well as a data set that includes maps, although the latter isn’t such a problem with the likes of Google Maps and Street View available to all. Perhaps one of the hardest tasks of all is to track the virtual objects and render them correctly in 3D so that the user can move through his or her environment while still receiving accurate annotations of that which they see. To do all that without so much as having the overlay a millimetre off, in real time and with the correct perspective, is one of the toughest challenges of all. Finally, on a more conceptual than technical level, the developer also needs to make sure that any information that they display to the user is done so in a meaningful way that’s relevant to the task. We can only take in so much at once and it’s no good bombarding someone with more than their brain can process. So, while it might be possible for an application to pull in 3D details of absolutely everything in a scene, it’s important to have something that’s both selective and unobtrusive as well. This is augmented reality and both the augmentations and the reality are just as important as one another.
