Hello everyone, I’m back. This time I’m taking a far left turn from posts about the field of photography and we’re diving on in to the wonderful world of immersive experience, i.e. AR, VR and it’s cousins.
Before we get started at looking at the family tree of immersive experiences there is one thing worth addressing, the reality-virtuality continuum. This concept was defined way back in 1994 after VR’s first wave, who knew it was so old. This concept was brought to light by Paul Milgram. He stated that reality existed on a spectrum. On the far left of that spectrum there was reality as we know it and on the far left was a completely virtual environment, what we have come to call VR. In between virtual reality and reality fell a mix of the two including augmented reality and augmented virtuality. Augmented reality adds the virtual to the real world while augmented virtuality adds the real world to the virtual world, a subtle difference.
Starting on the far right of the spectrum we have the completely virtual environment which we know as VR. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of VR the 2018 Steven Spielberg film Ready Player One does a great job visualizing it. There are a few things that either don’t exist or are still in their infancy. Omni-directional treadmills are just barely hitting the consumer market and full body integration has yet to be achieved. I’m getting off track though, VR is a completely digital environment. A user slips on a headset and with assistance of handheld controllers they are able to manipulate the digital world around them. The defining feature of virtual reality is the headset. This headset projects the virtual world into your field of vision giving yourself a first person point of view of the world while blocking out all visual influences from the real world, it’s best described as being inside the virtual world and not just viewing it from the outside.
Moving slightly further to the left we have VR’s cousin AR. AR stands for augmented reality and unlike VR does not require a headset as a defining feature. Instead of you being placed in a virtual world fragments of the virtual world are placed in the real world. I say fragments because if the digital world completely obscures reality then it’s not AR. surprisingly AR has been employed a lot longer than most people think. For example when you’re watching football and you see the on field marker saying 2nd and 13 and the yellow line indicating first down, those are examples of AR. The 1st and 10 yellow line has existed in football since 1998. I’m not smart enough to understand the science of cameras and on the fly digital manipulation but humanity as a whole has possessed this understanding and technology for at least 22 years now.
https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-to-virtual-reality/
The differences between mixed reality and augmented reality are very fine point. Initially you’d think they’re the exact same but rest assured they are not. AR overlays the digital on to the real world, Pokémon Go and 1st and 10 markers are a great example of that. Mixed reality, or MR, is not an overlay but a mixing of the digital and real worlds, as is indicated by it’s name. In mixed reality you can manipulate both the digital world and the physical world. It sounds almost too crazy to be true, but the technology exists in products like the Microsoft holo-lens. The best way to describe it is your half in VR and half in reality. On the reality-virtuality continuum mixed reality falls exactly in the middle.
The last term does not have a single point on the reality-virtuality continuum but is instead an umbrella term that covers everything on the continuum except for reality itself. Extended reality refers to anything that pushes the limits of “reality” further than physical reality whether it’s a complete immersion into a different world or simply a digital overlay it’s all extended reality. Fortunately this term is pretty much one size fits all so even if technologies we currently don’t have come into existence they’ll be right at home in extended reality.
Now that the definitions of the technology are out of the way lets talk about immersive experience design. Up until recently designing interfaces has been completely physical or digital. The idea behind immersive design is to encompass as many of the senses possible into one experience with user interfaces. The existence of these interfaces could range from fields of science to realms of entertainment. The point is to seamlessly meld an extended reality experience with reality to the point where your immersion is not broken and your experience feels as natural as possible. The more senses that are encompassed in this experience the closer to perfection immersive experiences are.