Augmented Reality has the potential to enrich our lives in countless ways. From everything to being able to look at a sign in a foreign language and have it translated in real time into our own native tongue. With AR we could have the collected data of an entire world at our fingertips at a moments notice.
A great many strides have been made in AR in recent years. The massive success of Niantic's Pokemon Go coupled with the announcement of Apple finally entering the AR arena with ARKit would seem to herald AR as a viable technology. So should we be getting excited at this brave new world just around the corner? Absolutely. But not yet.
I'm excited about Augmented Reality because unlike Virtual Reality, which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but hopefully allows an improvement on what's happening presently.
Tim Cook
Pitfalls
The recent resurgence of AR is the technology's second proper go-around. The first being around 2012. Recent history indeed... in any other field, but almost a time far enough in the past to be looked back at and reminisced with nostalgia, inside the world of cutting edge tech.
Back in 2012, the hardware for a device to be able to [scan a scene through a camera and on seeing a predetermined pattern, overlay an object orientated to exactly match the perspective of the real scene in order to give the illusion of it being part of the actual scene. Then be able to move in concert with the device and to do all this in real time (30 frames a second)] utilise AR was now starting to become commonplace. This led to a lot of money being invested, in good and bad, and a lot of apps being created. Again, both good and bad. The vast majority of them being the AR equivalent of a "Hello World" app. Mostly little more than tech demos of an emerging, albeit very exciting technology.
Where Are We Now?
Fast forward to 2017. The year most people would agree as the breakout year for Augmented Reality. Pokemon Go capturing the worlds attention for starters. For the vast majority of the worlds population, Pokemon Go was their first real introduction to Augmented Reality, and definitely the first time they themselves were using the technology. For a lot of the tech world, the most significant thing in AR in 2017, would have been Apple's long suspected and eagerly anticipated announcement that they would be entering the AR game.
So we have the technology. What next?
Content is King
Technology is nothing without content. And content is the next phase of where AR's maturity as a technology is hinged upon.
As Augmented Reality content creators, we need to be cognisant of the need for AR content be as compelling as possible. The last thing we need is for the public to look at a post Pokemon Go AR landscape and say, "OK. So that was it?"
THE FUTURE
This is what's needed for AR to emerge as a viable future technology and not an interesting footnote in the pages of 21st Century technology history:
Viable Markerless AR
AR where the user is not required to print out a marker is essential for the future growth of AR. "Traditional" marker based AR still has a huge place and that will continue to be the case. But in areas where the markers are "invisible", (think movie posters and cereal boxes). AR markers hidden in plain sight.
What we need is technology where any content can be displayed and be able to interact with almost anything in the real world.
The technology required has been developed, but right now we are not there yet. Available but limited to only top of the range phones from their respective manufacturers. The time needed for low end phones to have the processing power and camera technology required (depth sensing IR lenses, etc.), and for every current phone not at the top of the heap in 2017 to be retired and swapped out might take until the end of this decade.
Following on from that.
A single unified markerless AR standard. Right now, two of the biggest players, Google and Apple are pushing their own depth sensing technology and their own AR systems, ARKit & ARCore. This is a situation where there could be a likelihood where as content creators, nobody wins.
Compelling Content
AR is an exciting technology. Anybody seeing AR in action for the first time, their usual reaction is, "Wow!". Tech demos are good, but if the majority of apps all people see are little more than fancy but superficial tech demos, then before long the reaction of the public at large will be, "So that's all augmented reality is?"
Almost anything that can be viewed via a device can be enhanced by augmented reality. But if we get sidetracked by concentrating on making pretty demos or apps with all the depth of a puddle. We'd be doing ourselves, the technology and the public at large a huge disservice.
Wishlist:
Make AR an integral part of the phone ecosystem. Instead of AR only being accessible after opening the required app first. Just pointing the device at the right AR target would open the corresponding app automatically. This might end up being essential when people would generally have a number of different AR enabled apps on their phone at the same time.