Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Virtual Content Creation
: The AR system needs to have an easy-to-use and
intuitive content creator engine with plenty of assets for various use cases. Also,
with intuitive interface and development tools, it should enable rapid prototyping
capabilities for the developer community so the time to market for the apps can be
minimal.
Always On Always Augmented
: This means that the AR solution should work
on various devices such as smartphones, tablets, PC, etc., and at different form factors
such as wearables and head mounted displays.
Additionally, for AR to reach a mass market, the applications should be able to
run on mobile devices that invariably would need dedicated hardware to acceler-
ate feature tracking and matching to keep the power consumption at an acceptable
level. Moreover, the success and adaptability of AR depends on easy-to-use software
tools and user interfaces designed for non-experts. All the above factors would be
key to providing a low-cost and high volume AR solution. The “always on always
Augmented” needs to access data continuously and save battery power by offloading
expensive computations. Therefore, AR coupled with cloud technology can provide
a seamless AR experience.
7.1.2 Short Evolution of AR
Although AR appears to be a recent phenomenon, it has been an active area of
research and application for decades now. There is a plethora of information on the
web on AR (please see [
3
] and the references therein). Hence we provide a brief
history of AR in this chapter. AR has been a staple of sci-fi films throughout the first
decade of the twenty-first century, but has much deeper roots than that. The birth of
AR could be considered to be in 1962, when the Sensorama Stimulator (the so-called
“Experience Theatre”) was patented. Researchers had already begun investigations
into augmenting Reality in the 1950s, but this invention in particular provided a
simulation of an experience by using visual images, breezes, and vibrations.
“There are increasing demands today for ways and means to teach and train
individuals without actually subjecting the individuals to possible hazards of par-
ticular situations,” the inventor Morton Heilig wrote in his patent application [
8
].
Further into the 1960s, Ivan Sutherland invented “The Sword of Damocles,” the
first head-mounted display system. Suspended from a ceiling, the device fed the
viewer (rudimentary) computer generated graphics. Subsequent gradual develop-
ments occurred over the years until the 1990s when the term “Augmented Reality”
was first coined, and virtual Reality was brought to television audiences through
popular media. In 1994 the article “Augmented Reality: A class of displays on
the Reality-virtuality continuum” was published by Milgram and associates [
14
]
and in 1999 Hirokazu Kato's ARToolkit [
5
] sparked great interest in the research
community.
In early 2000, the first commercial spinoffs such as fromBoeing [
19
] and dedicated
AR companies were founded like Metaio [
22
] and Total Immersion [
9
]. All early AR
