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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
An easy-to-understand primer on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are driving the next technological revolution. If you want to get in on the action, this book helps you understand what these technologies are, their history, how they're being used, and how they'll affect consumers both personally and professionally in the very near future. With VR and AR poised to become mainstream within the next few years, an accessible book to bring users up to speed on the subject is sorely needed--and that's where this handy reference comes in! Rather than focusing on a specific piece of hardware (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, iOS ARKit) or software (Unity, Unreal Engine), Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies offers a broad look at both VR and AR, giving you a bird's eye view of what you can expect as they continue to take the world by storm. * Keeps you up-to-date on the pulse of this fast-changing technology * Explores the many ways AR/VR are being used in fields such as healthcare, education, and entertainment * Includes interviews with designers, developers, and technologists currently working in the fields of VR and AR Perfect for both potential content creators and content consumers, this book will change the way you approach and contribute to these emerging technologies.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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ISBN 978-1-119-48134-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-48152-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-48142-3 (ebk)
Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies®
To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies” in the Search box.
Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: Getting Started with Virtual and Augmented Reality
Chapter 1: Defining Virtual and Augmented Reality
Introducing Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Looking at Some Other Types of Virtual and Augmented Reality
Taking a Quick History Tour
Evaluating the Technology Hype Cycle
Chapter 2: Exploring the Current State of Virtual Reality
Looking at the Available Form Factors
Focusing on Features
Considering Controllers
Recognizing the Current Issues with VR
Assessing Adoption Rates
Chapter 3: Exploring the Current State of Augmented Reality
Looking at the Available Form Factors
Considering Controllers
Recognizing the Current Issues with Augmented Reality
Assessing Adoption Rates
Part 2: Consuming Content in Virtual and Augmented Reality
Chapter 4: Consuming Content in Vir tual Reality
Exploring Consumer-Grade Virtual Reality
Identifying Near-Future Hardware
Comparing Current and Future Options
Chapter 5: Consuming Content in Augmented Reality
Exploring Consumer-Grade Augmented Reality
Identifying Near-Future Hardware
Comparing Current and Future Options
Part 3: Creating Content in Virtual and Augmented Reality
Chapter 6: Evaluating Your Project
Assessing Your Project’s Technology Needs
Choosing Virtual Reality
Choosing Augmented Reality
Chapter 7: Planning Your Virtual Reality Project
Defining Your Virtual Reality Project
Exploring Design Principles in Virtual Reality
Defining Your Social Experience
Chapter 8: Planning Your Augmented Reality Project
Defining Your Augmented Reality Project
Exploring Design Principles in Augmented Reality
Defining Your Social Experience
Chapter 9: Creating Content for Virtual and Augmented Reality
Assessing Design Software
Capturing Real Life
Assessing Development Software
Distributing Your Content
Part 4: Virtual and Augmented Reality in the Wild
Chapter 10: Exploring Virtual Reality Use Cases
Art
Education
Entertainment
Healthcare
Gaming
Chapter 11: Exploring Augmented Reality Use Cases
Art
Education
Industry and Commerce
Entertainment
Utilities
Part 5: The Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality
Chapter 12: Assessing the Future of Virtual Reality
Anticipating the Near-Future Changes
Considering Virtual Reality’s “Killer App”
Predicting the Impact
Chapter 13: Assessing the Future of Augmented Reality
Analyzing Near Future Changes
Considering AR’s “Killer App”
Predicting the Impact
Part 6: The Part of Tens
Chapter 14: Ten Questions about Virtual and Augmented Reality
How Will Virtual and Augmented Reality Affect Me?
Which Technology Will Win?
What If I Don’t Have a Headset?
How Large Will the Virtual and Augmented Reality Consumer Markets Get?
When Should I Enter the Market as a Consumer?
When Should My Company Enter the Market?
Which Virtual Reality Headset Is Right for Me?
What Could Impede the Growth of Virtual and Augmented Reality?
Are There Lasting Physical Effects?
What Is the Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality?
Chapter 15: Ten Industries That Will Be Transformed by Virtual and Augmented Reality
Travel
Museums
Aerospace
Retail
Military
Education
Entertainment
Real Estate
Advertising and Marketing
The Unknown
Chapter 16: Ten (Or So) Mobile Apps for Experiencing Augmented Reality Today
Google Translate
Amazon AR View
Blippar
AR City
ARise
Ingress and Pokémon Go
MeasureKit and Measure
InkHunter
Sketch AR
Find Your Car and Car Finder AR
About the Author
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Introduction
Around 25 years ago, I visited the Forest Fair Mall in Cincinnati, a large, sprawling mall that has since closed down. One of the greatest features of this particular mall (to an 11-year-old kid) was the basement arcade. Running the full length of the mall, it had everything you could want: a Ferris wheel, bumper cars, mini golf, laser tag.
But the pièce de résistance was a pair of Virtuality pods, a virtual reality (VR) experience created by the Virtuality Group. The Virtuality 1000 featured a stereoscopic head-mounted display helmet (HMD), an exoskeleton touch glove and gun, and a waist-high ring used to track a player’s movement within the enclosure. This specific VR experience was a local user multiplayer experience: Take on all comers in a high-energy laser battle!
My father patiently waited in line with me and handed over the $10 for me to play. By the time I reached the front of the line, I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. As the helmet was lowered onto my head, I closed my eyes, mentally preparing myself for the wonders of the virtual world I would be entering. Where would I be transported to? A lush, Amazonian jungle? A gleaming futuristic metropolis? Surely my imagination could not prepare me for the wonders I was about to behold.
Thus prepared, opening my eyes, I found … a mostly empty, boxy world populated by pixelated characters. Confused and disoriented, I glanced around the crudely rendered environment, the tracking barely keeping up with my movements. I was being assailed with lasers (really, blocky lines), but the resolution of the headset was so limited, I couldn’t even determine where I was being shot from. I was quickly eliminated from the game, and the headset came off. My less than two-minute experience in VR had left me (and my father’s wallet) deflated.
Fast forward to 2013, and I found myself working in the emerging technology field. The industry was abuzz with the “next big thing”: the Oculus Rift Development Kit (DK1), a VR headset originally launched via Kickstarter. Still sporting the scars of my previous VR experience but determined to see what the buzz was about, I sorted through the mess of cables in the development kit, hooked it up to my computer, and put the headset on with trepidation, preparing myself to be let down once again by the promise of VR versus the reality of VR.
Instead, all the things I hoped to experience in that Forest Fair mall years ago were delivered. The Rift tracked my head movements accurately! The visuals were convincing! Instead of floating in a vaguely 3D-ish landscape populated by blocks, I could wander about a Tuscan villa, watch butterflies flutter by, stand by a roaring fire, gaze out the windows … 3D audio tying it all together. It all felt so real. With little to actually accomplish in the demo scene (no monsters to fight or riddles to solve), I (and everyone I showed the scene to) could spend hours just wandering about the villa, for the first time truly immersed within VR.
What was little more than a simple demo scene for a Kickstarter startup became the headset that launched a thousand companies. In one fell swoop, consumer-grade VR was re-introduced to the world, and upon seeing just how far this transformative technology has come, hundreds of thousands have jumped into this burgeoning industry to help shape its future.
About This Book
VR, which was once only a plaything in tech laboratories or a research-and-development (R&D) experiment in large technology companies, has entered the mainstream consciousness. VR, and its technological cousin augmented reality (AR), are quickly proving to be the next pieces of transformational technology. Estimates vary wildly on just how big these markets might become, but many estimates place business revenue of VR and AR at over $100 billion by 2021, if not sooner.
Despite these eye-popping numbers, the VR and AR wave is still in its early stages. There is still ample time for consumers, content creators, even those with just a passing interest in learning how these technologies will affect their lives, to brush up on these technologies before the wave of mass consumer adoption hits.
In this book, I arm you with broad knowledge of the VR and AR fields, their histories, and where they appear to be headed in the future. VR and AR are vast areas of study, and many Fortune 500 companies are currently waging war to try to ensure that their interpretation of VR/AR is the winner. As such, I don’t try to make you an expert in one singular facet of the technology. Instead, I provide you with a broad knowledge base so you can confidently move forward into the fields of VR and AR as best fits your goals. I hope that the potential of these technologies will excite you enough to go out to experience and create content for them on your own.
Perhaps more than any technology wave in recent memory, the fields of VR and AR are in a state of constant flux. As such, much of the technology mentioned in this book is early-generation technology, and some might not even be released by time of publication. I’ve taken care to be as thorough as possible while generally focusing on technologies with an already released consumer product, but I would be remiss not to mention certain technologies that might or might not be widely available by the time this book reaches you. When covering the various hardware/software options, I take care to mention upcoming technologies, but I give preference to technology that is already available to consumers.
While both VR and AR have a number of enterprise-level options available, I try to focus mainly on consumer-grade devices, as these devices are what the majority of consumers will interact with. However, as many current AR devices are targeted more towards enterprise consumption, I discuss those options in a bit more detail.
Finally, I try to keep things simple and clear in this book. For those who would like to explore the technologies in greater depth, I have included some more technical information within sidebars and marked with Technical Stuff icons scattered throughout the book. Those aren’t required reading, so feel free to skip them if you want to ignore the more in-depth technical pieces.
Foolish Assumptions
Without any knowledge of you, the reader, any assumptions I can make are most likely wrongheaded and foolish. However, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and assumed the following in order to outline the type of reader this book may appeal to.
The book assumes that you have at least a passing familiarity with VR and AR. You may have heard the terms being tossed about at work, or seen someone trying out a VR experience at a mall or retailer, or even had the chance to try out a headset yourself. You may have heard of Apple’s and Google’s recent forays into the AR space for mobile devices (ARKit and ARCore, respectively), and maybe you’re curious how you can try these experiences yourself.
The book also assumes you have an open mind regarding these technologies and are curious about where they’re headed in the future. Both VR and AR are very much emerging technologies in their (mass consumer) infancy. Some of the experiences and form factors available for both are very experimental and not always the polished experiences you may be accustomed to on your personal computers or mobile devices. Getting in on these technologies in their infancy allows you to follow their growth, missteps and all, which makes it all the more exciting when they succeed!
Icons Used in This Book
As you read through this book, you’ll see icons in the margins that call out blocks of information you may find important.
The Tip icon marks helpful advice for saving time and money or enhancing the experience as you begin to explore VR and AR.
The Remember icon calls out a key piece of information to retain or a summary of the points just made. If you remember nothing else from the section you just read, remember the material marked here.
Warning icons point out hazards, drawbacks, or gotchas.
Anything called out by this icon takes a deeper look at a particular technical detail. Feel free to skip this information if it doesn’t interest you.
Beyond the Book
In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that includes some abbreviated explanations of the current state of VR and AR, use cases for VR and AR, and where VR and AR are headed in the future. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and type Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
Where to Go from Here
You can jump to any chapter that interests you, and come back to revisit sections later as needed. If you’re an absolute beginner, I suggest reading Chapter 1 to establish a baseline for definitions of what the terms I use mean when discussing VR and AR. If you’re only interested in how you can use VR and AR today, Chapters 4 and 5 are a good starting point. And if you’re looking to take the step of creating your own VR or AR content, Chapter 6 should help guide your choice for further reading.
VR and AR have often been called the “fourth wave” of transformative technology after the personal computer, the Internet, and mobile computing. Each of those previous waves has uniquely shaped our lives to the point where we can’t imagine our lives without them. In this book, I help you examine how this “fourth wave” might change your life with the same effect as the first three waves. I hope you’ll walk away from this book excited about this new “fourth wave” of technology, with a strong knowledge base that you can use to make your own informed decisions on the technology or apply to your own projects as you create.
Part 1
Getting Started with Virtual and Augmented Reality
IN THIS PART …
Understand the various terms, types, and histories of virtual and augmented reality.
Explore the current state of virtual and augmented reality’s form factors and features.
Review virtual and augmented reality’s adoption rates.
Chapter 1
Defining Virtual and Augmented Reality
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding what virtual and augmented reality are
Explaining some other related terms
Reviewing the history of virtual and augmented reality
Understanding the technology hype cycle and the fourth wave
When you picture “technology of the future,” what are the first things that come to mind? In ten years, how will technology be affecting your life differently than it does today?
Some people may picture self-driving electric cars that at a word automatically whisk them off to their desired destinations. Others no doubt envision an artificial intelligence (AI) utopia in which robots perform the menial labor tasks humans have had to do in the past, freeing people up to tackle life’s tougher problems.
Finally, many people may foresee a future where they’re able to create their own realities. They could be sitting on a couch at home but put on a headset and feel as if they’re at a soccer stadium thousands of miles away. They could put on a pair of high-tech glasses and have a fully realized holographic avatar of a friend appear to chat with them. They may even picture an entire room they could step into and dial up an environmental simulation as if they were actually there.
The average person may not have had a chance to experience this just yet, but nearly everyone can envision virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as part of humanity’s future. And with good reason. For years, entertainment such as movies, TV shows, and books have been selling us on the promise of VR — the VR OASIS of Ready Player One, the VR real-world simulations of The Matrix, the full-blown environmental re-creation of the holodeck from Star Trek… . All types of entertainment have their take on what has, up until very recently, been the stuff of magic and imagination.
The ideas of VR and AR themselves seem outlandish. Within the comforts of my own home, I can put on a headset and be anywhere? Experience anything? Be anyone? Attend live concerts or sporting events as if I were there? Fly across the sea and explore other countries? Travel through entire solar systems in minutes, jumping from planet to planet? These are the kinds of VR and AR that the public has long been promised. But until recently, that promise has fallen short of, well, reality.
Within the past few years, however, computing and manufacturing technologies have begun to catch up with the promises of VR and AR. What was once the purview of science-fiction has been brought to life. Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once claimed, regarding the wonders of new technology, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” If you were to travel back in time and show an iPhone to a medieval peasant, he would think you were a wizard with a magical picture box. And today, many first-time users of high-end consumer VR headsets often describe the experience as nothing less than “magical.”
Within the next decade, we can expect massive changes in how we work, how we’re entertained, and how we communicate, all due to VR and AR. These technologies will fundamentally change where we’re headed as a society. But in order to do so, they need creators — dreamers, innovators, and magic makers — to help them reach their potential.
Before you dive into all the details of VR and AR, you need a basic overview of these technologies. This chapter helps you recognize the different types of VR and AR and provides you with some basic vocabulary for differentiating and discussing them. This chapter also provides a brief historical overview, so you can understand how we arrived at this current place in technological history. Finally, it explains the Gartner Hype Cycle, a way of understanding how technological innovations tend to grow and change, and how the Gartner Hype Cycle applies to emerging technologies such as VR and AR.
Introducing Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Virtual reality is often used as an umbrella term for all manner of immersive experiences, including many related terms such as augmented reality, mixed reality, and extended reality. In this book, however, when I refer to virtual reality, I generally mean an immersive computer-simulated reality that creates a physical environment that does not exist. VR environments are typically closed off from the physical world in the sense that the environments they creates are wholly new. Although the digital environments could be based on real places (such as the top of Mount Everest) or imagined ones (such as the underwater city of Atlantis), they exist apart from the current physical reality.
Figure 1-1 shows an example of a VR environment. It’s a screen shot of Wevr’s VR experience, The Blu, which allows users to explore undersea coral reefs and ocean depths, including an encounter with an 80-foot whale.
FIGURE 1-1: A VR screen shot of The Blu by Wevr.
Augmented reality is a way of viewing the real world (either directly or via a device such as a camera creating a visual of the real world) and “augmenting” that real-world visual with computer-generated input such as still graphics, audio, or videos. AR is different from VR in that AR augments (adds to) a real-world or existing scene instead of creating something new from scratch.
By strict definition, in AR, the computer-generated content is an overlay on top of the real-world content. The two environments have no way of communicating with or responding to one another. However, AR’s definition has been somewhat co-opted in recent years to also include a more blended hybrid called mixed reality, in which interaction can occur between the real world and digitally augmented content.
In this book, when I refer to augmented reality, I use it as a blanket term that includes mixed reality as well. The two terms are often used synonymously within the industry as well, with mixed reality rapidly gaining favor as the more descriptive term for the combination of analog and digital realities.
Figure 1-2 shows an example of one of the most popular recent examples of AR, Pokémon Go, which places a digital Pokémon character within your real-world environment.
FIGURE 1-2: AR Pokémon Go being played on an iPhone.
THE THIN YELLOW LINE
For the past 20 years, millions of people have been exposed to a flavor of AR every Saturday and Sunday, although they may not realize it. In 1998, the 1st & Ten line was introduced by a company called Sportvision to digitally visualize the first-down line for the casual football fan.
In order to achieve this effect, Sportvision creates a virtual 3D model of the football field. While capturing video of the game, each real-world camera also transmits its location, tilt, pan, and zoom values to powerful networked computers. Using these values, the computers can determine exactly where each camera sits within the virtual 3D model of the field and can use a specialized graphics program to draw the line on top of the video feed.
Drawing that line is more complicated than you may think. If the line were simply overlaid on top of the video feed, any time a player, referee, or ball passed over where the line was overlaid, the person or object would appear “under” the digital representation of the line. This would lead to a very poor viewing experience.
In order to make the digital line appear to display under various people and objects, the software uses one color palette for colors that should appear as part of the field and another color palette for colors that should appear on top of the line. When it draws the digital line onto the video feed, the field color palette colors are converted to yellow where the line should appear, whereas colors in the other color palette are not converted, leading the people and objects to appear on top of the digital line.
This encompasses AR in a nutshell — a real environment (the football field) has been augmented with digital information (the yellow line) to enhance users’ viewing experience in a way that feels natural to the viewers.
Looking at Some Other Types of Virtual and Augmented Reality
VR and AR are still in their relative infancy, so it’s difficult to know which terms will fall out of favor over time and which terms will stick around. The terms virtual reality and augmented reality may have staying power, but you should also be aware of some of the other terms out there.
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME …
You may hear terms used in ways that seem misaligned with the rest of the industry. Sometimes it’s because terminology has changed since the naming occurred — which does happen, because the technologies are still very young. However, it can also be due to branding.
For example, Microsoft recently released a line of Windows Mixed Reality headsets. But by nearly any current metric, the headsets would more properly be referred to as virtual reality headsets, because they allow only a closed-off virtual environment similar to other VR headsets. Many people believe that Microsoft intends to merge its current batch of VR headsets with AR interaction, but the current naming can make things confusing for consumers.
As long as you understand the definitions described in this section, you should be able to evaluate products according to their actual feature set, and not necessarily how they’re marketed.
Mixed reality
Mixed reality (MR) may take your view of the real world and integrate computer-generated content that can interact with that view of the real world. Or it may take a fully digital environment and connect it to real-world objects. In this way, MR can sometimes function similarly to VR and sometimes function similarly to AR.
In AR-based MR, the content of the digital world is no longer passively laid on top of the real world; instead, it can act as if it were a part of the real world. Digital objects appear as if they existed in the physical space, and you can even interact with some digital objects as if they were actually there. For example, you might be able to drop a digital rocket onto your coffee table and watch it blast off, or bounce a digital soccer ball off the real-world walls and floor.
Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore, while described as AR, actually straddle the line between AR and MR and reveal the naming discrepancy occurring within the industry. Although they project a digital layer on top of the physical world, they’re also able to scan the environment and track surfaces within the real world. This enables users to place digital objects in the real world, cast digital shadows on real-world items, affect digital lighting according to the real world’s lighting conditions, and so on — all things that lean more toward the definition of MR.
Another example of a current AR-based MR headset is the Microsoft HoloLens (shown in Figure 1-3), a headset that scans the physical environment to mix in digital objects. This technology, which is also found in Microsoft’s Meta 2, takes things a step further than the current tablet-based offerings from Apple and Google. It projects the digital environment onto translucent visors and enables your hands to interact with those digital objects as if they were physically there.
Used with permission from Microsoft
FIGURE 1-3: Microsoft HoloLens headset hardware.
In other MR instances, you may only see a completely digital environment with no view of the real world, but that digital environment is connected to real-world objects around you. In your virtual world, real-world tables or chairs may digitally appear as rocks or trees. Real-world office walls may appear as moss-covered cave walls. This is VR-based MR, sometimes called augmented virtuality.
Following their strict definitions, AR provides no interaction with the augmented digital world, whereas MR does allow such interaction. However, these strict definitions are becoming blended in the industry. Often mixed reality and augmented reality are used as synonyms within the industry. Their meaning over time will likely grow and change. In this book, I use AR and MR synonymously, unless otherwise noted.
Augmented virtuality
A term that has yet to gain much traction within the industry, augmented virtuality (AV), also sometimes called merged reality, is essentially the inverse of typical AR. Whereas AR refers to predominantly real-world environments that have been augmented with digital objects, AV refers to predominantly digital environments in which there is some integration of real-world objects. Some examples of AV include streaming video from the physical environment and placing that video within the virtual space or creating a 3D digital representation of an existing physical object.
Figure 1-4 shows an example screenshot of AV through Intel’s recently defunct Project Alloy. Using 3D cameras, Intel was able to bring in interactive imagery of physical real-world objects (such as your hands) into its virtual environments.
FIGURE 1-4: An example of AV from Project Alloy.
Extended reality
Extended reality (XR) is the umbrella term for the entire spectrum of technologies discussed thus far (including VR, AR, and AV).
The virtuality continuum is a scale used to measure a technology’s amount of realness or virtualness. On one end of the scale is the completely virtual, and on the other end is the completely real. XR spans the full spectrum of this scale, from end to end.
Figure 1-5 shows where these terms fall on this scale developed by technology researcher Paul Milgram in the 1990s. Remember, though, that MR and AR, while separated in this chart for definition’s sake, are often used synonymously to refer to the spectrum that MR is shown covering here.
FIGURE 1-5: Paul Milgram’s reality–virtuality continuum.
In this book, I mainly focus on two terms — virtual reality and augmented reality — and the technological areas that they cover. Those two terms encompass most scenarios. I use virtual reality to refer to any hardware/software combination that creates a mostly or entirely digital experience. I use augmented reality to refer to any real/physical environment to which digital elements have been added (which may or may not interact with the real environment).
Taking a Quick History Tour
In 1935, a short story called “Pygmalion’s Spectacles” by American science-fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum told the tale of a professor who invented a pair of goggles that enabled a user to trigger “a movie that gives one sight and sound … taste, smell, and touch… . You are in the story, you speak to the shadows (characters) and they reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it.” Weinbaum’s writing predates computers and nearly predates the invention of television. If Weinbaum were to travel to the present and see just how closely his vision of VR resembles that of the emerging technology of today, he would probably be shocked.
Both VR and AR have an incredibly rich and diverse history, far too deep to fully cover here. However, a general overview of some of the various incarnations of these technologies may provide some insight into where the technologies may be headed in the future.
The father of virtual reality
In 1955, a cinematographer named Morton Heilig, considered the father of VR, imagined a multisensory theater called “The Cinema of the Future.” Heilig created the Sensorama (see Figure 1-6), an arcade-style mechanical cabinet built to stimulate the senses, for which he then developed a number of short films. It included many of the features prevalent in modern-day VR headsets, such as a stereoscopic 3D display, stereo speakers, and haptic feedback through vibrations in the user’s chair.
Courtesy of Minecraftpsycho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensorama#/media/File:Sensorama-morton-heilig-virtual-reality-headset.jpg) under a Creative Commons license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
FIGURE 1-6: The Sensorama.
Shortly after inventing the Sensorama, Heilig also patented the Telesphere Mask, the first-ever head-mounted display (HMD), which provided stereoscopic 3D visuals and stereo sound. This (relatively) small HMD more closely resembles today’s consumer VR headsets than the bulky seated form factor of the Sensorama. The patent image shown in Figure 1-7 bears a striking resemblance to many of the headsets available today.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2955156A/en
FIGURE 1-7: The Telesphere Mask patent.
Augmented reality gets a name
In 1990, Tom Caudell, an employee at Boeing Computer Services Research, was asked to create a replacement for Boeing’s current system of large plywood boards with wiring instructions for each aircraft being built. Caudell and his co-worker David Mizell proposed a head-mounted display for construction workers that superimposed the position of cables through the eyewear and projected them onto multipurpose, reusable boards. Instead of having to use different boards for each aircraft, the custom wiring instructions could instead be worn by the workers themselves. Caudell and Mizell coined the term augmented reality for this technology.
INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH AR
Tom Caudell and David Mizell not only coined the term augmented reality, but also kicked off the use of AR in an industrial setting.
Industrial manufacturing is poised to be one of the most significant areas of AR expansion in the near future. Whereas companies developing consumer-facing AR applications must deal with a number of complications (including an unknown user base and unknown environments to perform in), those variables can be managed or even removed within the tightly controlled environment of an industrial manufacturing workspace. Manufacturers can develop targeted hardware and applications that can help their workforce train more quickly, work faster, access data more easily, and help avoid errors. All these benefits can lead to massive improvements in a company’s bottom line, making AR usage within industrial settings a match made in heaven.
Early virtual reality failures
In 1993, Sega, a videogame company riding high on the release of its massively popular Sega Genesis, announced the Sega VR headset for the Sega Genesis at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Sega originally intended to deliver the device for $200 in the fall of 1993, a moderately affordable price point at the time. However, the system was plagued by development difficulties and was never released to the public. Sega’s CEO at the time, Tom Kalinske, said that the Sega VR was shelved due to testers developing painful headaches and motion sickness — an unfortunate first foray into consumer gaming VR.
At the same time, another gaming industry veteran decided to release its take on VR gaming. The Nintendo Virtual Boy was released as the first portable unit capable of displaying stereoscopic 3D graphics. With the Virtual Boy, Nintendo had hoped to capture a unique technology and cement Nintendo’s reputation as an innovator by encouraging more creativity in game development outside the traditional 2D screen space. However, development issues also plagued the Virtual Boy. Initial tests of color LCDs were said to have caused jumpy images, leading to Nintendo retaining the red LEDs that the Virtual Boy was eventually released with. Additionally, the Virtual Boy started as a head-mounted system including tracking. However, with concerns about motion sickness and the risk of developing lazy-eye conditions in children, Nintendo changed the head-mounted system to a tabletop format. Critics panned the system. It was never able to meet sales targets and disappeared from the market within a year.
These early failures, coupled with other failed attempts at creating mass-consumer VR devices, pushed VR advances back into research laboratories and academia for a few decades.
Virtual reality breaks through
In 2010, a tech entrepreneur named Palmer Luckey was frustrated with the existing VR head-mounted displays on the market. Almost all were expensive, extremely heavy, had a small field of view (the total viewing area a user can see), and high latency (delays between user interaction and the display refreshing to reflect those interactions) leading to a very poor end-user experience.
Channeling these frustrations, Luckey built a series of prototype HMDs, focusing on creating a low-cost, low-latency, large-field-of-view, and comfortably weighted headset. His sixth-generation unit was named Oculus Rift, and he offered it on the project funding website Kickstarter as Rift Development Kit 1 (DK1), as shown in Figure 1-8.
Courtesy of Sebastian Stabinger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift#/media/File:Oculus_Rift_-_Developer_Version_-_Front.jpg) under a Creative Commons license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
FIGURE 1-8: The Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 (DK1).
The Kickstarter campaign was a massive success, raising $2.4 million, almost 980 percent of the original target. More important, the Kickstarter campaign served to propel interest in VR in the consumer market to an all-time high.
Augmented reality hits the mainstream
AR was treated to a surprise surge in popularity from a rather unexpected source: the mobile phone. Similar to VR, AR had trudged along in relative obscurity for a few decades since its inception. Interest had increased slightly with the rise of VR in recent years, and new developments from companies such as Microsoft, Meta, and Magic Leap had shown promise, but nothing was available for mass consumption, and it was unclear when anything would be.
In 2017, AR underwent its largest boost in public awareness since its inception, as both Apple and Google released their own takes on AR for their various handheld mobile devices running either iOS or Android. Though neither has released exact numbers, estimates place the number of users with ARKit- or ARCore-capable devices to have reached over a quarter billion by the end of 2017.
AR, long toiling in relative obscurity, suddenly had an enormous market of consumers to create content for, and developers began racing to create content for that market. Some examples include AR gaming applications, utilities that place 3D objects within a real room for interior decorating planning, map utility applications that overlay the real world with turn-by-turn directions or points of interest, and apps that can translate foreign language signs simply by pointing a mobile device camera at them.
THE FOURTH WAVE
Large-scale technology revolutions rarely occur in linear progressions of innovation and adaptation. Instead, they come in waves. No one can predict how large a wave will be, how fast it will occur, how disruptive the technology will be, or which way the wave will break.
VR and AR are often regarded as the fourth wave of emerging technological change. (The first three waves were the personal computer, the Internet, and mobile devices.) A wave is beginning to crest that could shape the future of humanity. Recognizing where we are in the wave and how we can best be a part of it means that we, too, can help shape the future.
With such a small sample size of life-altering technologies, it can be difficult to make predictions on how these waves will play themselves out. However, evaluating the first three waves and their development can help paint a picture of how the wave of VR and AR might break.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the previous waves was that each successive technological wave has been shorter than the last as far as consumer adoption. Internet adoption was quicker than personal computer adoption, and the mass adoption of cellphones was quicker still. Most current predictions for VR have VR ubiquity occurring no later than 2022, with AR coming a few years behind (2025 or so). By that time, experts predict VR and AR will have woven themselves completely into our daily lives, and picturing our lives without them would be akin to picturing our lives today without mobile phones or the Internet.
Evaluating the Technology Hype Cycle
Technological waves also go through various peaks and troughs before they reach mass consumer adoption. Information technology research firm Gartner once proposed what it called the Gartner Hype Cycle, a representation of how the expectations around transformative technologies play out upon release (www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp). The Gartner Hype Cycle can help predict how a technology will be adapted (or not) over time. Both the Internet (with the dot-com crash) and mobile pre-2007 went through similar (if not exactly analogous) market curves.
In the beginning, an Innovation Trigger kicks off interest in the new technology, triggered by early proof-of-concepts and media interest.
Next is the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Buoyed by the early work and media buzz, companies jump in with higher expectations than the technology can yet deliver upon.
What follows is the Trough of Disillusionment, where interest in the technology begins to dip as implementations of the technology fail to deliver on the lofty expectations set by the initial Innovation Trigger and media buzz. The Trough of Disillusionment is a difficult space for technology, and some technologies may die out in this space, never fulfilling their initial promise.
Those technologies that are able to weather the storm of the Trough of Disillusionment reach the Slope of Enlightenment, as second- and third-generation products begin to appear and the technology and its uses are better understood. Mainstream adoption begins to take off, often paying dividends for the early adopters able to see their way through the trough with their ideas and executions intact.
Finally, we reach the Plateau of Productivity, where mass adoption truly begins, and companies able to weather the stormy waters of the hype cycle can see their early adoption profit.
Determining where VR and AR are in this cycle can be useful in making your decisions on how to approach these technologies. Does it make sense for your business to jump into these technologies now? Or are things not ready for prime time, and should you perhaps hold off for a few more years?
Gartner claims that VR is just leaving the Trough of Disillusionment and headed into the Slope of Enlightenment at the end of 2017, with a payoff of mass adoption within two to five years. AR, on the other hand, is listed by Gartner as currently wallowing in the Trough of Disillusionment, putting mass adoption for AR at a more conservative five to ten years out.
Though the Trough of Disillusionment sounds like an ominous place for AR to be, it’s a necessary phase for technology to pass through. Innovative technology, before hitting consumers’ hands, needs to go through the grind of establishing an identity and determining where it fits in the world. Manufacturers need to figure out what problems it solves well and what problems it does not solve well. That often requires numerous trials and failures to discover.
AR as a mass consumer device is in its adolescence. Manufacturers and developers need time to figure out what form factor it should exist in, what problems it can solve, and how it can best solve them. Rushing a technology to market before these questions can be answered can often cause more problems than it solves, and is something that manufacturers of any emerging technology, including VR and AR, should be wary of.
Further, Gartner released this Hype Cycle report for VR and AR less than one month after Apple’s ARKit announcement and a full month ahead of Google’s ARCore announcement. An argument could be made that those two releases technically triggered mainstream adoption purely by the install base of ARKit and ARCore. However, that feels slightly disingenuous. Installed base alone does not automatically equal mainstream adoption (though it is a large piece of the puzzle).
When using a technology becomes frictionless and nearly invisible to the end user, when using that technology becomes as second nature as starting up your web browser, checking your email on your mobile device, or texting a friend, that is when a technology has truly hit mainstream adoption. Neither technology has yet reached this level of ubiquity, but both are looking to hit their stride. The long run of VR and AR holds the same promise of technological waves as the personal computer and the Internet.
The time for you to take action on these technologies is now, whether it’s to simply research what they can do for you, to dive into purchasing a device for your own consumption, or even begin creating content for VR and AR.
Chapter 2
Exploring the Current State of Virtual Reality
IN THIS CHAPTER
Reviewing the various form factors for virtual reality
Comparing the features of current virtual reality hardware
Surveying the available types of virtual reality controllers
Exploring some of the current issues with virtual reality
Assessing virtual reality adoption rates
With virtual reality (VR) developments in a state of constant flux, it’s an exciting (and frenetic) time to be involved with VR. Stopping and taking stock of where these developments are headed is important. Are we racing toward mass adoption of VR, propelling us to the peak of the fourth wave of technological change within the next year or two? Or, as some critics have suggested, is the current VR cycle just another misstep in VR’s development cycle? A promising rise of the tide, followed by a washout leaving companies high and dry, leading to another decade of VR wallowing in the “Trough of Disillusionment?”
Many experts believe that VR will begin to see mainstream adoption by 2021 to 2023. By that time, VR headsets will likely be on their third or fourth generation of technology, and many of the issues that exist in 2018 will have been solved.
This chapter takes a look at the current state of the technology (as of this writing). Many first-generation devices have been released, with many second-generation (or first-and-a-half generation) devices announced as well. Understanding where VR is now will help you make your own predictions about where the technology is headed, and decide for yourself where we are in the VR cycle.
Looking at the Available Form Factors
Most VR hardware manufacturers seem to be driving toward a similar form factor, generally a headset/integrated audio/motion controller combination. That form factor may indeed be the best base setup for VR experiences, but it could also speak to a lack of innovation that there is not more variety in hardware executions for mass consumer devices. Perhaps years down the road, VR’s form factor will change entirely. For now, most VR form factors are executed as a headset, but every company has designed its own version of how that form factor should look and feel.
To keep the focus of this book somewhat manageable, I mainly focus on the consumer head-mounted displays (HMDs) with the largest consumer base. Currently, those are the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, Samsung Gear VR, PlayStation VR, Google Daydream, and Google Cardboard. These are the first-generation consumer VR headsets with the broadest reach at this time, though the list will change in the future. Even if another headset comes along, it will likely share many of the same evaluation criteria I include here. Many of the upcoming second-generation devices (see Chapter 4) can be evaluated against the same criteria. Becoming familiar with the various options, benefits, and drawbacks of various hardware executions will enable you to evaluate any new entries into the market, not just the hardware mentioned here.
For consumer-grade VR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift currently sit at the high end of our VR experience graph. Without a doubt, they offer some of the most realistic experiences of any VR hardware to date. Those experiences come at a cost, however — both for the headsets themselves and for the separate hardware required to power them.
Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality VR headsets, a new addition to the VR market, are in the same high-end tier of VR experiences as the Vive and the Rift. Don’t let the name fool you, though. Mixed Reality is just how Microsoft is branding its VR headsets — there is nothing “mixed reality” about them at this time — though the name could point to a convergence of VR and AR in the future. Will the products eventually function as both a VR headset and as an augmented reality (AR) headset via a camera pass-through image of the surrounding environment? That could be the direction Microsoft would like to take it, but that capability doesn’t fully exist yet in its current batch of headsets.
Windows Mixed Reality is not a brand of hardware; instead, it’s a mixed reality platform that includes specifications that hardware providers can follow to create their own Windows Mixed Reality Headsets. (Google Cardboard, discussed later in this chapter, functions in a similar fashion.) To use a personal computing metaphor, you might think of the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift as Apple, in that each manufacturer creates and markets its own headset hardware, controlling all aspects. On the other hand, Microsoft controls only the software specifications for Windows Mixed Reality; it doesn’t necessarily create its own hardware. Various manufacturers can create their own headsets and sell them under the Windows Mixed Reality name, provided they meet Microsoft’s specifications. However, the AR headset Microsoft HoloLens (which Microsoft does produce) also technically falls under the Windows Mixed Reality platform. It can all get very confusing. In this chapter (and throughout the book), when I discuss Windows Mixed Reality, it is generally in relation to the line of immersive VR headsets. When discussing the Microsoft HoloLens, I typically refer to it directly by name.
Without one definitive Windows Mixed Reality VR headset to use as a baseline, it can be difficult to compare apples to apples for evaluation purposes. For example, the Acer Windows Mixed Reality headset may have different baseline specs than, say, the HP Windows Mixed Reality headset. That said, the specifications of most Windows Mixed Reality VR headsets generally place them toward the higher end of VR experiences.
The PlayStation VR offers a take on VR by a game console manufacturer. Sony’s PlayStation VR doesn’t require a separate PC to run it, but it does require a Sony PlayStation gaming console. Reviewers have praised the PlayStation VR’s ease of use, price point, and game selection, but they’ve knocked the lack of a room-scale experience, the slightly underperforming controllers, and the lower resolution per eye versus the higher-end headsets listed here.
Table 2-1 compares some of the available desktop VR headsets. For legibility, I provide separate tables for the higher-end “desktop” VR experiences, which require external devices to power them, typically computers or game consoles, and the lower-end mobile VR experiences, which work with mobile devices such as smartphones. (The mobile device info is coming up later in the chapter, in Table 2-2.) This is not to say that one experience is necessarily a better choice than the other. Both have different sets of strengths and weaknesses. For example, you may require the most powerful or most immersive experience you can buy — in which case, externally powered “desktop” VR experiences are for you. Or, perhaps image fidelity is not as much of a concern and you require mobility for your VR headset, making the mobile VR headsets a better fit for your personal needs.
TABLE 2-1 Virtual Reality Desktop Headset Comparison
HTC Vive
Oculus Rift
Windows Mixed Reality
PlayStation VR
Platform
Windows or Mac
Windows
Windows
PlayStation 4
Experience
Stationary, room-scale
Stationary, room-scale
Stationary, room-scale
Stationary
Field of view
110 degrees
110 degrees
Varies (100 degrees)
100 degrees
Resolution per eye
1,080 x 1,200 OLED
1,080 x 1,200 OLED
Varies (1,440 x 1,440 LCD)
1,080 x 960 OLED
Headset weight
1.2 pounds
1.4 pounds
Varies (0.375 pound)
1.3 pounds
Refresh rate
90 Hz
90 Hz
Varies (60–90 Hz)
90–120 Hz
Controllers
Dual motion wand controllers
Dual motion controllers
Dual motion controllers, inside-out tracking
Dual PlayStation move controllers
TABLE 2-2 Virtual Reality Mobile Headset Comparison
Samsung Gear VR
Google Daydream
Google Cardboard
Platform
Android
Android
Android, iOS
Experience
Stationary
Stationary
Stationary
Field of view
101 degrees
90 degrees
Varies (90 degrees)
Resolution
1,440 x 1,280 Super AMOLED
Varies (Pixel XL 1,440 x 1,280 AMOLED)
Varies
Headset weight
0.76 pound without phone
0.49 pound without phone
Varies (0.2 pound without phone)
Refresh rate
60 Hz
Varies (minimum 60 Hz)
Varies
Controllers
Headset touchpad, single motion controller
Single motion controller
Single headset button
Although this evaluates the first generation of VR devices, it is important to remember that all this can change quickly. The second generation of devices that will see its release within the next year or two (see Chapter 4) includes high-end devices that remove the need to be powered by external hardware, or at the very least removes the wires from the experience. This “untethering” of users from their machines will be a great step toward making VR more accessible.
There are many different variations of Windows Mixed Reality Headsets with varying specifications. I include specs for the Acer AH101 Mixed Reality Headset, a popular Windows Mixed Reality Headset.
You may hear stationary experiences referred to a few different ways — standing, seated, stationary, desk-scale… . They all mean the same thing: You can’t move about in physical space in the VR experience.
OLED stands for organic light emitting diode. Known for its ability to display absolute blacks and extremely bright whites, OLED generally compares favorably to LCD in its contrast ratios and power consumption.
Slightly lower on the first-generation consumer VR devices performance and features scale are mobile-powered VR devices such as the Google Daydream and Samsung Gear VR. These devices require little more than a relatively low-cost headset and a compatible higher-end Android smartphone, making these devices a good entry-level choice for the curious first-time user.
At the low end of the first generation of consumer VR headsets are mobile-powered headsets such as the Google Cardboard, so named for the fact that the original Cardboard was little more than a few specially designed lenses and a folded cardboard container for your mobile device. Google Cardboard relies on little more than some inexpensive parts and your mobile device to create a VR headset, and almost any newer mobile device — iOS or Android — can run the required Google Cardboard software. However, due to its lack of specialization, the Google Cardboard VR experience doesn’t provide the level of experience offered by dedicated headsets.
As with Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Google doesn’t necessarily manufacture all Google Cardboard headsets. The Cardboard specifications are freely available on Google’s website. Other manufacturers have also produced a number of Google Cardboard variations, such as Mattel’s View-Master VR and DodoCase’s SMARTvr. All the Cardboard variations use similar technology and offer similar levels of support.
Don’t be fooled by the name — not all Google Cardboard devices are made out of cardboard. Many of the Google Cardboard devices are, but others, such as the Homido Grab and View-Master VR, are constructed from much sturdier materials. These viewers are generally touted as “Google Cardboard Compatible” or “Google Cardboard certified,” meaning they meet the Google Cardboard specifications set out by Google.
Table 2-2 compares some of the available options for mobile VR headsets. It can be difficult to provide direct specifications for the mobile executions because each headset may support multiple mobile devices and, thus, not have a single specification it adheres to.
Keeping those general categories in mind, let’s take a look at the total sales and reach of the VR headsets mentioned so far. All companies have remained relatively quiet concerning their true sales numbers, but the figures in Table 2-3 are the reported forecast via Statista as of November 2017 (www.statista.com/statistics/752110/global-vr-headset-sales-by-brand/). You’ll notice Google Cardboard figures are higher than those listed by Statista. That’s because Cardboard has been around longer than the two years tracked here. Google self-reported more than 10 million Cardboards having shipped worldwide as of February of 2017.
TABLE 2-3 Virtual Reality Headset Units Sold
Device
Units Sold
HTC Vive
1.35 million
Oculus Rift
1.1 million
Sony PlayStation VR
3.35 million
