As digital technology becomes more integrated with our everyday lives, the search is on to find more intuitive ways to interact with it. Augmented reality is a very real attempt to achieve such a system, bringing interactive video, social networking, education, training, and gaming into the real world in ways that were purely the realm of science fiction in decades past.
MORE THAN JUST U HUD
s with many advanced technologies, augmented reality was first developed for military use. It debuted in the early 1990s with the U.S. Air Force’s virtual fixtures, although head-up displays (HUD) and headset designs had been conceived and developed for almost a century beforehand. These sorts of HUDs that provide information to the headset wearer in the form of digital readouts or gauges have long been a staple of science fiction movies and games, but that was only a hint of what augmented reality could offer a far broader audience.
In much the same manner as virtual reality, early implementations of augmented reality suffered from a lack of raw computing power to render the visuals required for realistic digital graphics, as well as the small-screen technology needed to display it comfortably.
The fast-paced development of smartphones since the turn of the century and the continual shrinking and performance enhancements of graphics technology mean that the past decade has seen incredible advancements in augmented reality technology too.
