Not a long time ago, we witnessed the up sprout of a new technology that left us in total awe for quite some time.

It helped users to interact with a world that is created purely with the help of technology through stimulation. Tantalized by its capabilities, we named it “Virtual reality” or in other words reality emulation.

Virtual reality is an interactive computer-generated experience creating with the help of environment stimulation

However, this article is not about VR. Then you may ask why to start an article with something that is not the main focus of it! Well, it is because VR has something in common with AR, the technology we are going to talk about in this article.

Both AR and VR have the same blood running through their veins. However, while the former offers an interactive experience of the real world through digitally added elements, the latter shut us out from the physical world, by offering a computer-generated simulation of reality.

According to Colocation America, the birth of AR can be traced back to 1968.

“In 1968, a Harvard professor and computer scientist by the name of Ivan Sutherland invented what he called The Sword of Damocles. He invented this first sort of augmented reality device with his student, Bob Sproull.”

It was a Boeing researcher named Tom Caudell who came up with the name “Augmented Reality” for this technology. But, it took more than five decades for AR to get the limelight in the industry.

MARTA App, Google Glass and Microsoft’s HoloLens are a few innovations that helped AR to win the popularity it always deserved.

According to Microsoft, Mixed reality on HoloLens 2 combines an untethered device with apps and solutions that help people across your business learn, communicate, and collaborate more effectively

Nowadays, AR has become popular in tech circles. Startups to enterprises are using AR to boost the capabilities of their products and services.

For example, this company has come up with an idea to turn your smartphones into a dash cam that offers navigation supported by an interactive experience of the real world through Augmented Reality. If you use their app “DashPlex” during your journeys, it not only detects accidents but also give you information about your surroundings with the help of AR layers.

It is nothing but the benefits offered by AR are the sole reason why this technology is becoming popular day by day.

AR makes it easy to visualize a product, service or a scenario It can act as a banner to help customers with information about a product or store even before entering the premises It enhances the customer experience Increases customer engagements Improve brand value Makes a product or brand more appealing to the customers Helps you differentiate yourself from the competition

DashPlex, a mobile app that can turn your smartphone into a dash cam with navigation features supported by Augmented Reality (AR)

If you are a developer

There are numerous tools available to create an AR experience. They include

ARToolKit

ARToolKit is an open source software library that helps you create strong augmented reality applications. The features offered by tool includes camera position/orientation tracking, tracking of square marker patterns, tracking of planar images, support for Optical head-mounted display, calibration for cameras and optical stereo etc.

Vuforia

Vuforia has more than 600K developers registered with them. That’s a huge number! Vuforia can recognize 2D and 3D objects, play videos when target surfaces are detected, and comes with a vocabulary that contains more than 100,000 words. It also offers virtual buttons that can turn any surface into a touchscreen. Interesting isn’t it!

MAXST

MAXST is a cross-platform AR engine that provides all the features and environments one need to develop an augmented reality app. Key features include instant Tracker, visual SLAM, Object tracker, image tracker, marker tracker, QO code tracker, QR/Bar code reader, and cloud recognizer.

Wikitude

The features of Wikitude include object/scene recognition, instant tracking of augment surfaces, image recognition, multiple image targets, cloud recognition and it is optimized to 3D models in the AR scenes.

There are few more tools like Kudan, Easy AR, Hoppala, Layar and XZIMG that can help you with developing a world-class Augmented Reality app.

AR is becoming popular in the healthcare industry

If you are someone who wants to experience AR

There are so many AR apps available in the market.

Pokémon Go is a popular game that makes use of AR technology. Real Strike is an iOS game that offers a real-life shooting experience to the users. DashPlex is a mobile app that helps you to turn your smartphone into a dash cam with real-time navigation supported by AR. ARGON4 is a fully-featured web browser with the ability to display augmented reality content to users.

Conclusion

Even though developing apps with AR is facing a few challenges like limited hardware capabilities, legal issues and regulations, AR is becoming more successful in taking the centre stage of technological innovations, each passing day.