Imagine this.
You walk into your house, and all the walls and ceilings are covered in gold, you have
a massive flat screen TV on the wall, everything is completely clean, the kitchen counters
are all granite, everything is just really nice.
But none of it is real, and you take off your glasses and everything goes back to normal.
In the not so distant future, this could be reality.
Where we decorate our homes not with real things, but virtual things.
It might sound insane, but I don't think it's going to be that far off.
Let me explain how and why I think it's going to happen.
So as you know, virtual reality has gotten more and more popular these days, whether
it's the high end Oculus Rift or HTC Vive you hook up to your computer, or the kind
you just use with your phone.
And we're even getting true augmented reality with Microsoft's Hololens, which is able to
actually put opaque holograms into your field of vision.
Right now these technologies are pretty big and clunky like with anything.
But even still, I'm starting to see how we might get to a point where EVERYONE uses augmented
reality practically all the time.
Now, getting to amazing augmented reality will take longer than amazing virtual reality,
but I think in the end, the two will basically combine into one.
Though I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
So as I said, right now we have lots of virtual reality devices which are actually pretty
incredible.
Especially the HTC Vive which does room scale tracking where you can use the whole room
as a game area.
As time goes on this is only going to get more and more realistic, to the point where
you can use your whole house as a play area, and the headsets are completely wireless.
So the main idea behind virtual reality is it completely replaces your surrounding environment.
Right now at least, you have to put on these big headsets that cover your eyes, so you
can't see what's truly going on around you.
Augmented reality on the other hand, like the name suggests, adds to the real world,
without necessarily replacing it altogether.
When you put on Hololens or whatever, you still see the room you're in, but now there
are virtual objects as well.
And the technology uses the information about the room so these virtual objects can actually
interact with the real room.
So it's not that difficult to see how augmented reality might improve over the years.
Going from only being able to add ridimentary objects to the room, to more realistic and
interactive objects, then to actually useful things like a fully functional virtual TV.
Imagine that, instead of having a huge TV that you mount to the wall, you just put on
a pair of glasses and it puts a virtual TV on the wall instead.
Then with all that, I don't think it's hard to imagine when augmented reality can eventually
replace anything and everything in your field of view.
Not only do you have a virtual TV, but virtual paintings, and virtual wallpaper, virtual
computer monitors, whatever.
It kind of sounds awesome and sad at the same time.
Like, you'd be looking at all this awesome stuff and none of it is real.
I can imagine this distopian future where everyone just has the same blank furniture,
all the walls and couches and tables are completely white, but you have these contact lenses that
makes everything look different.
I mean I doubt that would actually happen, but I could totally see maybe everyone having
a room in their house that's a designated "virtual room" that could you could change
into whatever, and I think that would actually be pretty cool.
So you might be thinking, well that just sounds like pure virtual reality at that point.
And I guess you're right, which is kind of what I meant by virtual and augmented reality
combining into one.
I think eventually, augmented reality is going to catch up to "virtual reality" headsets
so they become obsolete.
Once that happens, you'll have one device that can either project only some stuff in
front of you, as well as just replacing everything altogether.
But of course, it would still take the real world into account so that you don't bump
into anything.
I think that's still a long ways off though, simply because virtual reality is so much
easier to accomplish, technically speaking.
You just take some lenses, and a good screen, and bam, you are put into a virtual world.
Even phones can do it these days, which should tell you something.
On the other hand, true augmented reality is not so easy.
There aren't any consumer grade headsets for AR out there, except for Hololens which is
still a developer kit.
And even though Hololens has amazing tracking and hologram quality, it's pretty low resolution
and only takes up a tiny fraction of your field of view.
Now if you've been following Apple at all, they recently talked about how they're doing
a heavy push for "Augmented Reality".
But to be honest, the kind of AR they're showing off isn't what I would call true augmented
reality.
It's basically just using your phone's camera to look at the world on a phone's screen,
then adding things to it.
Nothing even remotely close to Hololens.
It reminds me of every time people talk about augmented reality in the context of Pokemon
Go.
Which is like the WORST possible example of augmented reality I can imagine.
I don't care what anyone says, but just overlaying an image onto a video doesn't automatically
make it augmented reality.
The pokemon didn't even interact with the environment at all, except for sometimes correctly
standing on a surface, and that was it.
But at least with Apple it seems like they're moving in the right direction.
Their software is able to apparently detect surfaces, but also scale of the objects it's
looking at.
So if you add an object, it's the right size.
And if you add multiple objects, they can interact with each other and the real world,
like a lamp.
In that case, I guess you could call it augmented reality, it's just not something that is going
to make people say WOW.
Because you're just looking at it on the screen.
In most cases I think it's just going to be pure novelty.
Pretty much the only useful case I can think of for that type of "augmented reality" is
one they mentioned about shopping for furniture online.
Where you can hold your phone up to your room, and it will place a virtual piece of furniture
in there so you can get an idea of how it would look in your room.
I could see that being pretty useful actually.
In any case, I guess you have to start somewhere.
But what about some other cool uses for augmented reality?
The possibilities are pretty much endless, even outside your house.
Even just walking down the street, you could get information about shops you're going past,
like reviews, store hours, that sort of thing.
Actually Google announced they're developing a feature that does just that with their upcoming
"Google Lens" software for phones.
Again it just uses your phone, but it's definitely more augmented reality than pokemon go.
You hold your phone up to some shops or whatever, and it uses things like your phone location,
compass, maybe even reading text, to figure out what store you're looking at.
Then it displays all sorts of information.
I'm just not sure that would be any easier than looking it up yourself.
Also in the future maybe there will even be some sort of social aspect to augmented reality,
like people can choose to have social media profiles show up above them.
Personally I think that would be pretty creepy and I wouldn't want that, but you just know
that there are plenty of people out there who would do it.
And what about when you're just driving down the road, could be lots of uses there.
The first thing that comes to mind is GPS directions, where it can tell you exactly
what lane to be in or where to turn without taking your eyes off the road.
Because it's all projected right in the road.
Though by that time we all might already have self-driving cars anyway.
If we want to get really speculative, we can think about how we might be wearing these
augmented reality "glasses".
I actually think it will be hard to get these to catch on for a few reasons.
We saw how Google Glass turned out, and I think a big reason was you pretty much looked
like an idiot wearing them.
Even though they were latest state of the art tech, people would still just think "what
the heck is on your face?"
I bet the only way that any type of high tech glasses would take off are if they're either
unnoticable, or SO ridiculously useful that no one cares what they look like.
Both of which probably won't happen any time soon.
Sure people might wear them just while driving, but I doubt it when they're walking down the
street.
I guess at some point things will get so advanced that they'll just be able to fit everything
into a contact lens, but we're obviously nowhere close to that.
But you KNOW it will happen eventually.
You know I personally wouldn't be surprised if we have augmented reality contacts within
50 years, easy.
If you think about how far we've come in the past 50 years, it's pretty insane.
The first microprocessors weren't made until the 1970s, and now we literally have the first
self driving cars.
And the first iPhone came out just 10 years ago.
We know that technology progresses exponentially, so I don't even know if we CAN imagine what
we'll get in 50 years.
But like I said, there's some stuff you just know will happen eventually, because it has
to.
Flying cars, yea obviously it will happen, just maybe not for a long long time.
Computer chip that you put in your brain that does augmented reality all the time?
Heh, maybe we're already in the matrix and we have no idea.
Alright enough of the wild speculation, let's get back on topic.
I do actually think augmented reality is going to come faster than most people think.
I mean Microsoft's hololens pretty much came out of nowhere when Microsoft announced it
just a couple years ago.
And having used it, as a first generation device, that thing is seriously amazing.
I really wouldn't be surprised if we see consumer versions hitting the shelves within 5 years,
that are many times more powerful than what we have today.
So I think that's enough crazy talk for now.
Think too much about this stuff you'll go nuts.
But I'm sure you guys have lots of thoughts on all this, so we can talk about that down
in the comments below.
If you want to keep watching, I'll put some other videos right here.
And if you want to subscribe, I make new videos every Tuesday Thursday Saturday.
Again I'm looking forward to hearing from you, so thanks for watching I'll see you next
time, have a good one.