Virtual and augmented realities
What was still considered science fiction at the turn of the millennium in movies like Minority Report is becoming more and more established in today's multimedia landscape: virtual reality and augmented reality - virtual and augmented realities. In the course of industrial digitalization, these new technologies are also growing into production environments and fulfilling various tasks there.
The continuum of realities
Virtual and augmented reality go back to the reality-virtuality continuum formulated by Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino in 1994. The continuum comprises a scale from the real environment to the virtual environment. From left to right, the proportion of virtuality increases. While virtual reality is on the right edge of the continuum, augmented reality is closer to the left edge. The degree of immersion describes, how »real« the content feels for the user.
Virtual and augmented reality are on the same scale of the virtuality continuum, but differ significantly in their practical application. In virtual reality, the real world is replaced by a computer-generated visual environment. This used to happen often in so-called CAVEs (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment). There, users are surrounded by several screens and view the stereoscopic projections displayed on them through 3D glasses. Today, VR glasses are common hardware that is now affordable in the video game sector, for example.
In augmented reality, the real environment predominates. However, this is expanded by digital content using smartphones, tablets or special AR glasses. On the displays, you look at the real world and see texts, images, videos or animated 3D models in real time. Interaction with the virtual content is also possible. Google's version of data glasses, Google Glass, became particularly well known in 2014. Microsoft is currently selling a similar product, the Holo Lens.