With every passing day, humans do their best to push the boundaries of reality and simulation. Extended Reality is one example that challenges the limits of what the human mind can achieve.
People are slowly progressing towards a lifestyle that is overwhelmingly dependent on technology. With the pandemic affecting outdoor activities, more and more people resort to indoor lives.
In such a time, this technology promises to enhance living standards and educational experience. XR is rapidly making its way towards industries and revolutionizing the life of humans in unfathomable ways.
What is Extended Reality?
Extended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term that refers to an environment created with the help of immersive technology. This environment is a fusion of real and virtual worlds and requires wearable devices and computers. XR technology is evolving every day as human-machine interactions reach new frontiers.
Subsets of Extended Reality
Three subsets of immersive technology constitute the concept known as Extended Reality. These are:
Augmented Reality (AR)
This component of Extended Reality uses the digital graphics and sound overlays of the real world to generate an immersive environment. The real-world digital tools include animations, texts, and images and can be experienced through smartphones, smart screens, tablets, and AR screens.
The best example to explain Augmented Reality technology are Snapchat filters. These filters use recognition software to put filters and objects onto users’ faces. It also uses sound overlays to let you record your voice or add music to your videos.
Another incredible example of Augmented Reality is L’Oreal’s Makeup App. Like Snapchat, this app uses software to recognize your face and try different makeup looks. This feature makes it easier for people to check which color and look goes well with the face frame without trying multiple times.
Virtual Reality (VR)
This immersive technology can be experienced using Head Mounted Display (HMD) gear. The digital environment is a simulation that provides the users a completely immersive and real-world-like experience.
For example, a company may design a game that makes you feel like floating in deep space. The gaming and entertainment industries are the most common users of Virtual Reality.
The most common example is the use of Virtual Reality in the military. It is an essential part of all the services such as the air force, navy, marines, army, and coast guards. Virtual Reality allows these armed forces to create an effective training method with multiple environments for their troops.
The services use Virtual Reality to teach soldiers basic skills like communication with civilians and residents. The military also uses it to recreate virtual battlefields, boot camps, medical training, and vehicle simulations.
Mixed Reality (MR)
As the name indicates, Mixed Reality incorporates the elements of both the real and digital worlds. This immersive technology is more advanced compared to VR and AR. Like VR technology, it requires a headset too. The processing power needed for the real-time experience of MR is greater than both AR and VR.
MR is different from Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. In MR, you do not go to the immersive environment like VR; the environment is brought to you, e.g., in the form of holograms.
Similarly, it does not just overlay sounds on your video like Augmented Reality. It also interacts with the surroundings too.
Microsoft’s HoloLens is one of the most talked-about results of Mixed Reality. It is a commercially available device that uses a computer and lenses.
You can wear the computer around your head, and the lenses cover your eyes. The user can then create and manipulate holograms and interact with them as though they exist in reality.
The HoloLens uses five cameras and three sensors to interact with your environment and learn about your surroundings continually.
It also has the ability to remember the placement of objects in your surroundings. So, when you use the feature later, sometimes, the apps and windows start from where you left them.
It also has numerous applications in health, medicine, gaming, retail, and education.
What Is the Use of Extended Reality?
The ability of Extended Reality to create seamless experiences by combining real and virtual worlds is taking the world by storm.
In the modern world, where everything is slowly shifting towards technology and digital life, Extended Reality is the future. It covers every aspect of your life. Some parts of our lives that XR immensely influences are:
Healthcare and Medicine
Extended Reality has changed the way we look at healthcare. Conventional practices are a thing of the past now. Surgeons use XR technology to visualize the complexity of our organs using 3D imaging.
This helps them plan the surgical procedure, perform the surgeries effectively, and avoid mishaps. Hospitals are using XR to improve the working methods, thus revolutionizing patient care.
Marketing
The biggest favor that Extended Reality has done to the world of marketing is the “try before you buy” experience. The companies use XR to create immersive environments containing all the product’s features. The users experience the effects first and then make up their minds.
This increases the customers’ awareness and motivates them to explore the brand more. This, in turn, helps the brands with the promotion without needing to go door-to-door or convince people of their product’s quality.
Entertainment and Gaming Industries
The entertainment and gaming industries are the primary users of XR. The companies use a combination of tracking cameras and real-time rendering to create an immersive virtual environment.
Studios also use it to generate an elaborate environment for the movie set. This reduces the cost of setting up a set for every scenario. Similarly, gaming industries use XR to create detailed virtual environments in the games allowing the gamers to experience a whole nother world.
In addition to that, the experience of concerts and art exhibitions can also be improved ten folds using Extended Reality.
Education
Extended Reality is an essential part of education and training for people who work around high-risk areas.
For example, XR is of great help when it comes to teaching aviation students how to fly planes. Instead of giving them instructions on an actual aircraft, the instructors use highly immersive virtual environments to avoid the risk of accidents.
Real Estate
Similar to the marketing world, real estate agents are also incorporating Extended Reality into their businesses. An immersive simulation of the layout allows customers to check the property out, making it easier to decide. It also helps the agents and managers of real estate to close the deal efficiently and effectively.
Why Do We Need Extended Reality?
With explosive technological advancement, XR will be a significant part of our day-to-day lives.
Some organizations have started incorporating XR into normal work routines because of its ability to remove geographical barriers. In cases where it is risky to set up an actual project, a company might use XR to weigh the pros and cons.
Similarly, it can help companies train the staff efficiently using innovative training simulations.
It can also help industrialists and scientists test and visualize the 3D models in simulations. This can help the research and development industries reduce the number of prototypes. This cuts the cost in half and enhances the quality.
When it comes to maintaining large spectrum industrial equipment, XR can provide an easy solution to the problem. Designing the XR replicas of running industrial equipment can help understand the performance of the equipment. Moreover, machine learning can also predict possible malfunctions and defects.
We are all familiar with the 360o feature that allows you to navigate a place without being physically present. With advancements in VR, this feature can give you a detailed tour of all the rooms while sitting in the comfort of your home.
If applied to these aspects of our lives, this can instantly revolutionize the way we buy assets.
How Does Extended Reality Work?
You can understand the working of Extended Reality from two perspectives: the developer and the user.
From the developer’s perspective, numerous immersive algorithms are designed to achieve Extended Reality. Professional data scientists and software developers design these algorithms. The algorithms give unique and fascinating features to XR so that users can have real-world experiences.
Another crucial component of Extended Reality is its 3-dimensional, biomechanical modeling and computer vision. In addition to these, machine learning and motion tracking are also the backbones of XR.
The programmers use several coding languages to design different commands for the complete XR experience. Python, Java, JavaScript, C, C++, and Swift are the most common languages used.
If we talk about the user perspective of XR, it includes three main components responsible for the fully immersive experience. These components are cameras, digital content, and Virtual Reality.
Cameras
The cameras capture specific information from the environment, e.g., AR solutions. These solutions are used to identify particular points of an environment and capture them. Later, the additional information is overlaid on these captured points.
Digital Content
The computer-generated or digital information is overlaid on the points captured by AR solutions. This is done by using markers or trackers such as Infrared, GPS, Laser, etc.
Virtual Reality
Last but not least, Virtual Reality uses the person’s senses to create a perfectly immersive environment. The primary senses picked up by VR are sight, hearing, and touch.
In some cases, the developer provides a headset to a user. This headset has the ability to reconfigure the user’s mind using the senses. This provides a one-of-a-kind experience that makes you feel like you are experiencing it in real life
Utilization of the Senses
The immersive Extended Reality utilizes the primary senses of humans to generate the virtual environment.
Touch: The sense of touch is an essential component for a fully immersive experience. Developers create body suits and gloves that can simulate touch to enhance users’ experience in VR.
Sounds: The XR devices are designed so that they can create sounds from all directions. This allows the user to perceive sounds like real-life situations. For example, a crowded place will have chatter coming from all directions. This will make it seem like a busy road in real life.
Sight: The most critical component of XR experience is the sense of sight. The XR devices use real-life images to overlay information so that the simulation looks precisely like the outside world. Even though this feature is very common in video games, some museums have hopped on the bandwagon of XR.
The museums provide Extended Reality headsets to all visitors. This allows them to experience the art with an immersive visual experience.
Taste and Smell: This feature is still under research and not a part of Extended Reality yet. However, it shows potential for the future of Extended Reality.
The idea is to install scent cartridges in the devices that produce smells like sweet, stinging, and neutral. An electrode placed at the tongue of the users will allow them to sense the taste simulation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, human-machine interactions incorporated into Extended Reality can transform our digital experiences. There is a possibility we might get to test the taste and smell feature in Virtual Reality.
In addition, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if mobile devices are enhanced to work as wearable XR devices.
No matter how fascinating it looks, XR also comes with certain shortcomings. These devices are continuously recording your movements, surroundings, audio, videos. Companies can use this to generate accurate simulations of your life.
This will allow the developers and government 100% access to your lives. Doing this without your knowledge and permission is an invasion of privacy. Hence, this might be disadvantageous.
This concept does pose some threats to our future, but everything comes with certain extremes. How we manage it with our actions and privacy policies is more critical.
The biggest threat that technology poses to humans is a dystopian world. In the future this might become true if we are not careful with our innovations. Therefore, we need strong policies to avoid a dehumanized future and enjoy technology’s benefits.