Augmented Reality(AR) And Virtual Reality(VR): What Are The Differences?

Augmented Reality(AR) And Virtual Reality(VR): What Are The Differences?

Hardik Gandhi   February 04, 2018

Many impossibilities of yesterday are possible today. Today’s impossibilities, centered around Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) will soon become possible. You see, the impossibility isn’t whether they work, rather it’s about taking them mainstream. So the real question is, how good does it have to be before the mainstream embraces it into their daily lives?

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented reality enhances our experience, making it more meaningful through our ability to interact with computer-generated enhancements layered over our reality. Simply put, computer generated graphics are used to augment your environment. Picture your wall turning into a big computer-generated screen or your coffee table turning into a monopoly board. In this way, the technology uses your real-life environment as its platform and builds on top of it.

AR technology is quickly turning mainstream. Pokémon Go is an example of AR being used in a very mainstream way, as are the filters in Snapchat. It is also being used to display score overlays on telecasted sports games and pop out photos, 3D emails, or text messages on smartphones. The tech industry leaders are also using AR to do amazing things with motion activated commands and holograms.

What is Virtual Reality?

In virtual reality, technology is leveraged to build a virtual world user can interact with. VR is usually made possible by wearing a VR helmet or goggles a lot like the Oculus Rift. With VR you are no longer in your world or environment, you are entirely teleported elsewhere. It immerses the user primarily by stimulating their vision and hearing, by making them believe they are living the simulated reality firsthand.

A virtual reality headset typically uses one or two screens that have to be held close to your face and viewed through lenses. It then employs various sensors to track the user’s head and potentially their body as they move through space. With this information, it renders the right images to create an illusion that the user is navigating a completely foreign environment.

How are Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality similar?

Augmented and virtual realities both leverage a lot of the same types of technology, and they both exist to serve the customer with an enhanced experience. Both typically use head tracking to follow the user’s movements. However, AR generally requires less processing power compared to VR as it doesn’t need to render a completely new environment. Additionally, both augmented and virtual realities have great potential in changing the landscape of many practiced fields like medicine by making things like remote surgeries a real possibility. These technologies have already been used to treat and heal different psychological conditions.

How do Augmented and Virtual Realities Differ?

Augmented reality enhances our experience by layering on virtual components like images and graphics as a new interactive layer over the real world. On the other hand, virtual reality builds its own computer-generated reality. And virtual reality is usually delivered to the user through a handheld or head-mounted controller. This equipment connects the user to the virtual reality, allowing them to control and navigate their actions in an environment meant to simulate the real world. While augmented reality is being used a lot more in mobile devices like our laptops, tablets, and smartphones to influence how the real world and digital world interact.

Augmented Reality Vs. Virtual Reality

Till today, augmented reality has found more success in the consumer space compared to virtual reality. There have been several applications with AR, along with video game and hardware devices such as the Google Glass. When it comes to VR, the technology is just stepping up to the plate. It’s still far away from being this great thing for social encounters in a virtual world, but it is getting there with the rise of the Oculus Rift.

There’s place for both AR and VR in the marketplace. However, AR will find commercial success a lot more easily since it doesn’t completely take people out of the real world. Also, it doesn’t have to be virtual reality vs. augmented reality. They don’t always operate independently of each other. In fact, they are often fused together to generate an even more immersive experience. But for now, AR is powering the next batch of magic tricks heading to your phone.

Conclusion:

Virtual reality and Augmented reality are inverse reflections of one in another, regarding what each technology wants to accomplish. Augmented reality overlays virtual elements in the real world, while virtual reality digitally recreates a real-life setting.

Both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are going to become mainstream soon. Things are already changing, and before we know it, we are going to be living in a world more virtual, than real.

Voxels (VOX) — Future of Virtual Reality

Voxels (VOX) — Future of Virtual Reality

Hardik Gandhi   February 02, 2018

Imagine if you could capitalize on the explosive growth of cryptocurrencies and the power of virtual reality in one investment. Would that be something you’d be interested in? I sure am. That’s why I am buying up all the Voxels I can get, which is currently trading at $.23. Believe me when I say that Voxel will be the OFFICIAL currency of virtual reality. This cryptocurrency has been created by Voxelus, a leading virtual reality world builder and marketplace, AND it’s compatible with Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR. As of today, Voxelus is the world’s largest source of virtual reality content, with more than 500 unique assets, 50 working games, and 7,000 additional pieces of content through their partnerships. I can confidently say that in 2020 Voxels could be trading at $1.50 a coin because the team is lead by legendary entrepreneur Halsey Minor, have strategic partnerships, an upcoming release of their first standalone game, and several other drivers of growth that I will outline below.

Basics:

1. Voxelus is a platform that allows anyone, anywhere to create and play VR games without needing to write a single line of code
2. The platform consists of the Voxelus Creator, a 3D design app for PC and Mac; Voxelus Viewer, which works on desktop PCs, Oculus Rift, and Samsung VR devices; Voxelus Marketplace, which allows creators to sell and user to buy VR content and games for the Voxelus ecosystem
3. The only form of payment within this ecosystem is Voxel, the in-game cryptocurrency
4. Ticker: VOX
   Price: $.23
   Ranking by Market Cap: 70
   Market Capitalization: $47,036,640
   Circulating Supply: 210,000,000 VOX
   Max Supply: 210,000,000 VOX
   Average Trading Volume: $8,316,144
   Consensus: PoW

Team:

1. The Voxels team is lead by no other legendary entrepreneur than Halsey Minor. Mr. Minor was the founder of CNET, co-founder of Google Voice, Salesforce.com, OpenDNS, Uphold, and Rhapsody.
2. The development team is led by Argentinean software industry veteran Martin Repetto. Mr. Repetto previously created, Atmosphir, a video game creation tool that was the runner up on the TechCrunch 50 in 2008. He was also the CEO of Minor Studios.
3. The business development and marketing teams are based in Los Angeles. The development and operations teams are located in Rosario, close to Buenos Aires, Argentina
4. As of 2016, the Voxels team has 10 individuals working on this project full time

Drivers of Growth:

1. Simply put, the team. Mr. Minor is arguably the most impressive and seasoned leader I have ever come across in the cryptocurrency space. He will squeeze every ounce of value out of this project
2. The Voxels team is on the verge of launching their first standalone game, Xtraction Royale. The game will be compatible with Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Steam VR. These are all large VR platforms with a good portion of the total VR market share
3. Voxels has engaged in a recent partnership with Flatpyramid.com, which will give Voxels users access to 7,000 digital assets like animated characters and environments
4. The team established the Voxel Foundation to help expand Voxel’s ecosystem to a variety of network games, VR platforms, and various entertainment outlets. The team has dedicated $5 Million Voxel towards this effort, with the option to add an additional $10 million
5. The team is currently undergoing a rebranding effort that should help boost their market exposure and increase public awareness. They have also alluded to introducing a newly formed partnership once the rebranding has been completed
6. Voxel has multi-platform wallets for MAC, PC, and Linux
7. It has been estimated that the market value for VR in 2020 will exceed $40 billion and Voxels will be at the epicenter of that explosive growth. Current market value for VR is about $6 billion

Headwinds:

1. Both VR and cryptocurrency are very young, evolving types of technology, so there will be lots of growing pains as a result. However, this team is lead by arguably the best leader which will help them navigate through the turbulent times
2. Since regulation will always trail innovation, the digital currency space can be subject to new regulations in the future
3. As of now, Voxels’s growth has happened purely through word of mouth. There has currently been no marketing dollars spent on this project

Summary:

Since this project is so unique we will have to do a little math and make some assumptions to get our price target. The current market value for VR is about $6 billion and the price of Voxels is:

1. Price: $.23
   Ranking by Market Cap: 70
   Market Capitalization: $47,036,640
   Circulating Supply: 210,000,000 VOX

As I previously mentioned, it is estimated that the market value for VR will reach $40 billion by 2020. So, if you apply the same growth rate to Voxel’s current price, it would be valued at about $1.50 a coin in 2020. However, this is assuming that Voxels market share stays the same into 2020, but I will promise you it will only grow from here.

Voxels Team… Let’s change the world!!

Source:Hacker Noon

How you can build your own VR headset for $100

How you can build your own VR headset for $100

Hardik Gandhi   January 21, 2018

My name is Maxime Coutté. I’m 16 and I built my own VR headset with my best friends, Jonas Ceccon and Gabriel Combe. And it ended up costing us $100.

I started programming when I was 13, thanks to my math teacher. Every Monday and Tuesday, my friends and I used to go to his classroom to learn and practice instead of having a meal at the cafeteria.

I spent one year building a very basic 8-bit OS from scratch and competing in robotics contests with my friends.

I then got interested in VR and with my friends we agreed that it would be really cool to create our own world in VR where we could spend time after school. But facing the fact that an Oculus was $700 at the time, we decided to build our own headset.

3D printed parts of the headset

Making VR accessible to everyone?

DARROW; J. R. EYERMAN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

It was because of an anime called Sword Art Online where the main character is in a virtual reality RPG that I fell in love with VR. I wanted to understand every aspect of it.

I bought the cheapest components I could and we started by learning the very basics of the physics and math behind VR (proper acceleration, antiderivatives, quaternions…). And then we re-invented VR. I wrote WRMHL, and then FastVR with Gabriel. Putting all of this together, we ended up with a $100 VR headset.

A fully hackable VR headset and development kit

To speed up VR development time, we built FastVR, an open-source SDK for developers that is easy to understand and customize. It works like this:

• The core headset computes the position of the headset in space;
• The position is sent from the headset to WRMHL, and part of the CPU’s power is dedicated to reading those messages;
• Then FastVR retrieves the data and uses them to render the VR game.

Everything you need to build the headset has been open-sourced and can be hacked.

Why open source?

I want to make VR mainstream. So I reached out to Oussama Ammar, one of the co-founders at The Family. I talked to him about setting up a company and launching a Kickstarter.

But he convinced me that for now, it’s better to wait on starting a business, to keep meeting others who have the same goals, and to keep learning.

We took a trip to Silicon Valley and Oussama introduced me to the chief architect at Oculus, Atman Brinstock. And they gave me some precious advice: make all of this open source.

The Next Step?

There are still a lot of technical points that we want to improve.

Our big focus right now is on a standalone VR headset, which we already have as a simple version, and cheaper 3D tracking.

All of this will be released soon.

How do I get started?

If you want to learn more about the technical side and build your headset, just follow the guide by clicking here. Star the repo if you liked it ⭐️

5 Best Technology Trends to Watch Out For In 2018

5 Best Technology Trends to Watch Out For In 2018

Hardik Gandhi   January 17, 2018

Pricekart.com

Every New Year brings around a buzz of excitement in the world of technology. And with 2017, being a year full of innovations and surprises, the expectations for 2018 are set to the highest standards as well. Technology trends keep evolving and changing over time. They determine the way we live, work and move ahead towards the future. Of all the technology trends that come into the market, only a few manage to set a milestone. Keeping that in mind, here is our list of the 5 best technology trends to watch out for in 2018.

5. Bigger and Clearer TVs

pricekart.com

With the concept of 4K televisions just sinking in, companies are already here with the next best resolution for TVs. Companies like LG, Samsung and Sony have already come up with their concept for the 8K TV. LG displayed its first ‘88-inch 8K OLED TV’ that comes with 33 million pixels at the CES 2018. And while that wasn’t enough, the company also showcased a ‘65-inch Rollable TV’.

The Rollable TV will feature 4K resolution and can be rolled in a tube form and carried around in a box, making it a portable TV. Similarly, Samsung launched the first ever modular TV called “The Wall”. It is a 146-inch modular TV that can be resized to any size that the user requires. All these innovations make a trend to definitely watch out for this year.

4. Wireless Charging All Around

It is not the first time wireless charging has been spoken about or adapted to charge devices. But this trend is certainly going to be seen everywhere, on most devices this year. Wireless charging works by placing the smartphone on a Qi-compatible charging mat. The mat plugs into a wire from an outlet to supply power.

However, this year might also see over-the-air wireless charging. This will work by delivering power to the devices over the air. Power can be transferred to devices that are at least two or more feet away and can reach up to 80 feet. Over-the-air wireless charging could be used for charging devices like smartphones, smart speakers, smart watches and wireless keyboards.

3. AR Over VR

We have seen Virtual Reality (VR) being one of the most trending technologies of the previous year. Virtual reality headsets help us immerse into a 3D environment that does not really exist. But this looks like the year of Augmented Reality (AR). The entire concept of AR revolves around delivering immersive experiences without having to shut yourself from the real world.

Augmented Reality shows a better version of the real world by overlaying virtual information on top of it. Using computer-generated images over the user’s real-world view to enhance everything the user feels, sees and hears, is what augmented reality is all about. Companies like Kinmo, Kodak, Carl Zeiss, Sony and even Netflix will be introducing AR to the technology market this year. This technology trend could come of great assistance in everyday life.

2. All-in-one Voice Assistants

Voice control is going to dominate 2018. Voice assistants determine the way we interact with computers. Google Assistant, Samsung Bixby and Amazon’s Alexa have already made their place by doing things that are asked of them. Things like playing the music, getting updates on the weather, and suggesting places nearby based on your current location, are things that we have already seen.

But voice assistants in 2018 will be able to carry out more than just the basic commands. For instance, information about your daily schedule, cooking recipes and other commands for your voice assistant to carry out will be added. Additionally, not just smartphones and speakers, these assistants will also be integrated inside televisions, headphones and even cars.

1. Ultra Thin Laptops

lg.com

Technology evolved from desktops to laptops for features like the portability and weight. And if that wasn’t sufficient, ultra-thin laptops are here to make their place. Acer recently unveiled the world thinnest laptop, the Acer Swift 7. The laptop is as thin as 8.9mm and sports a built-in fingerprint sensor. Likewise, even Dell launched its new version of the Dell XPS 13 laptop which is as thin as 11.66 mm. This makes it pretty evident that the upcoming laptops for this year are going to compete to be slim among all the other features.