Myths around Augmented Reality

Synopsis of answers to the questions I keep getting around the amazing Augmented Reality medium.

Context

Augmented Reality (AR) has been around since quite some time, almost 20 years, and there are many industrial use cases which have started becoming standards. Still there are many misconceptions and myths around this amazing medium. In this article I have collated questions I receive during my workshops and seminars and try to address them in this archive.

Will add to this repository on an ongoing basis.

VR/AR or AR/VR projects

Many places VR and AR have been used interchangeably. Even when referring to these medium they are used together. So the first myth breaker is that VR and AR are 2 different medium accessed using different gears.

It is also important to understand that both the medium sit at different places in the entire reality spectrum giving different level of immersion in the medium. VR needs a headset that covers users eyes completely, AR is experienced using mobile smartphones.

A variation of AR now is MAR — Mobile Augmented reality (to make it understandable) and MR-Mixed Reality. With MAR, user always have a sense of looking at virtual objects through a screen of gadget “held in hand”, while with MR user get certain sense of looking at virtual objects being present around them. However, due to hardware limitation MR is still not as immersive as VR