Introduction
The definition of Augmented Reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual-computer generated sensory input such as sound or graphics. [Credits to Wikipedia] I’ve chosen this article review is because it mentioned quite a few things that I personally experiencing right now. Like iPhones, it’s almost common for students like myself to have the possession of it. The first thing I like about iPhones is that it’s definitely user-friendly & another thing would be the AR of it. My explanation of augmented reality would be technology that can show you extra accurate information on a real time background.
Body
The first key finding will be augmented reality created by Layar. It is more popular for its “radar map” which simply show you example the nearest shopping mall when you use your phone and show to a certain direction and amazingly the “certain direction” is real time. Thus it will make everything look more in reality, as if experiencing it real life. This app is inbuilt in one of the famous gadgets – iPhones – nowadays, which is one of the reasons why iPhones is so popular recently. In my point of view, I think that having this kind of app is somehow make things we used to see it as surreal and allowing it to come true. It also gathers and gives you the information you may need in daily lives in a faster way and interesting way.
The second key finding is that augmented reality has taken social networking to the next level. Like what the article had mentioned, nowadays we can see other people’s profiles by just pointing a phone to the particular person. For more visual minded, it’s like placing your phone in front of a person and you will be able to see the person’s data, like their names and occupation etc, provided that the person have uploaded their information into the social networking site and you have access to it yourself. I personally thinks that this definitely allow people to interactive and bond more effectively. This new media definitely helps to boost greatly in social networking.
The third key finding will be that shopping nowadays also involves augmented reality. Take a step back in time and people are just shopping with virtual reality online, whereby people can choose see their wanted products, like clothes, on a virtual model within clicks away but now involving augmented reality, people can match their products on themselves visually, provided they have a webcam to connect with the shopping server. Just like in the article it had mentioned “Benetton is using AR in its latest campaign, called “It’s My Time” which aims to get members of the public to put themselves forward as potential models, and uses AR to show more details about existing models.” This allows the companies to interactive with their consumers/customers more straightforwardly and with more participation since nowadays everybody have software such as Adobe Flash Player installed in their laptops already. & With such software it will make it more convenient for people to connect and take part actively with the Internet world. Thus companies such as Benetton use this method to connect with their consumers/customers effectively. & With this, it able to make the commercial effect as while, which is definitely a one stone kills two birds method.
Another example of companies using augmented reality to advertise would be the famous sports car Audi. It collaborate with AR Door – a registered developer for augmented reality – and also Layar as well, which uses it to promote their new Audi A1 in Russia, furthermore Audi A1 is the first company to use 3D layer instead of 2D icons. It allows people to view the 3D Audi A1 in different places for people who are interested and wanted to see the different view of it in different places of Russia. In the article it also mentioned how Benetton uses augmented reality to attract people. Benetton come up with interactive ways using augmented reality to communicate with the people. They recruit models by asking people from around the world to take a video of themselves through the webcam and from their site that provide them with their Benetton background but at the same time having real time people (augmented reality applied). Comparing Audi with Benetton, Audi uses one step more advanced in augmented reality as they blended in 3D features. It will definitely attract more members of the public than Benetton and most probably get a better result than Benetton.
Click to watch & experience:
Conclusion
In conclusion, this new media trend, augmented reality has impact the world greatly. As now people are starting to use it almost daily and it’s really useful for people to get information that especially when it is very troublesome to get it in some ways. It definitely has great strengths in helping people in this advanced world. It not only helps the members of public also the provider that are the companies etc. However it also have its disadvantage. One of the defects of augmented reality is that it affects the young more nowadays, which the youth are the future of the world. & With all the augmented reality combine with games (“first person shooters”) which are three dimensional, real-time. Thus it is said to believe that it will increase teen aggression because they normalize violence. What I think that they could improve in decrease the chances of youths being aggressive that could control the usage of augmented reality in certain ways. Like perhaps blocking off the access to the online games site that involve AR after certain timings or maybe set a certain age that can play the augmented reality programmed games. However, the demands for AR still increasing as it can be seen from the latest statistics of the demands for smart phones.
(Requests for smart phones over the year)
Dawn 