6 Facts About Augmented Reality You Didn’t Know About

6 Facts About Augmented Reality You Didn’t Know Okay, Calm down, I know this is huge but you got this!

I cannot tell you how excited I am to share with you the history of one of the most sensational technologies, Augmented Reality. I am equally exhausted from all that research because history isn’t one of my favorite subjects and trust me when I tell you this, this one goes long back.

Not very back into the past, I dare say

Contrary to what most people believe, Augmented Reality isn’t an entirely new concept.

Before it was cool, Augmented Reality had been a topic of research for geniuses around the globe, inside locked doors of government centres or Universities. In fact, work started on it in the early 1960s (trust me, I am as shocked as you are).

The Father of Virtual Reality Morton Heilig, a cinematographer (and not a computer scientist) created a machine that imitated reality on a screen.

Sensorama in its true form

The machine did not just show the visuals and sounds in 3D but also threw in the occasional aromas to engage all the senses. He said he wanted to make the ‘cinema of the future’ He called it Sensorama.

Although it was nothing like the Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality that we see today, it showed that our reality could be played with. He was way ahead of his time and so he couldn’t find people who would fund his creation and Sensorama was halted.

Surprisingly, this mechanical machine still functions today.

However, if you use this device you have to sit down on the chair and not move, all necessary movements for the experience would be carried out by the chair itself.

The First Head Mounted Device In 1968, Ivan Sutherland developed the first head-mounted display for virtual reality (the spookily named Sword of Damocles) which opened the pathway for all the wearable technology that was to come in the coming future.

The sword of Damocles

It was not as sophisticated as the ones in use today, rather it was big and heavy (and weirdly ugly, if you ask me). It was so heavy that they needed to suspend it to the ceiling, so that the user doesn’t break his neck, apparently.

This was the beginning of the wearable technology that has made itself an integral part of the AR/VR systems we know today.

Videoplace During mid-70s, Myron Krueger established a lab called Videospace, a place where users were surrounded by virtual elements that responded to movements, a bit like Holodeck (Star Trek, anyone?). It was a very primitive form of interaction but a huge breakthrough at that time, considering the lack of hi tech equipment then.

Videospace He used projectors, video cameras, special purpose hardware, and onscreen silhouettes of the users, to make this Artificial Reality, a possibility. This sprung the need for an effective interaction between the real world and the virtual objects, which would eventually become possible.

EyeTap and the Heads Up Display All the experiments and research for so many years came to fruition when it became easier to host Virtual Data on a screen, while viewing the real world as it is, hence Augmented Reality.

EyeTap

Further improvements led to the creation of the first wearable device that inserted data into the see-through screens. These screens could be the camera lens in the EyeTap or the hood over the cockpit in case of Heads Up Display.

HeadsUpDisplay

The purpose of this technology was to offer direct data to the users without hindering their vision. Hence helping to work more efficiently (or shoot effectively if the user is the pilot of a fighter jet), without data being a distraction.

The common man’s first look at Augmented Reality The common folk had a look at Augmented Reality when Dan Reitan displayed the weather broadcast on television screens with abstract images over the maps and fascinated the crowds.

This was the start of many applications of Augmented Reality, in all its glory, on television.

Astronomical applications In 1987, Douglas George and Robert Morris created a telescope based Heads Up Display that superimposed the lens with relevant data pertaining to the stars they were looking at.

This ended the first age of Augmented Reality, the creation of a plethora of possibilities that would change the way people would see the world around them, quite literally!

I would tell you about the next two decades in the upcoming posts, until then stay WOWSOME!

About WOWSOME WOWSOME solves marketers’ problems using mixed reality. Our obsessive research in computer vision, integrated with marketing and advertising best practises, created the most useful suite of products in the segment.

Our solutions merge marketing & edutainment, real and digital, founding a mixed reality that delights as much as it advances us towards an evolved lifestyle.