Looking to explore the Battle of the Bulge from the perspective of a soldier? This tech will make it come true.
What’s the first thing you think of when it comes to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)? Sure, realistic video games, entertainment, and Pokemon Go are nice, but this only tip of the iceberg…
Humans have been investigating their environments for years: testing artificial structures, creating experimentation labs, and even launching satellites to observe the surface of our entire globe. However, not everyone gets to build artificial structures that matter, have the equipment to explore a lab or examine the pieces that make up satellites.
Most people learn today by reading through textbooks, watching videos, or listening to lectures, but these methods were never the best way to engage people in learning and truly test around concepts. There is a limited amount of understanding people gain from these sources of knowledge within a period of time, so it’s time to step it up a notch.
Immersive virtual reality (VR) is a 3D environment generated by computers that allow users to interact with simulated reality, like Ready Player One. That’s right, humans have created technology that literally allows an entire world to exist in a headset! That’s not even it though: Augmented reality (AR) is the technology that allows us to layer digital information and virtual displays onto the real world! AR can be seen in Iron Man when he pulls up control on his screen and can still see what’s in front of him! It is the aspect that VR/AR can allow us to manipulate and control our environment much more, that lifts the bounds to learning set on textbooks, lectures, and videos. VR/AR is going to storm through the technology industry, so let’s analyze why the waters are twirling with its potential impacts.
Better with Virtual Reality
As humans, we usually retain about 10% of what we read from textbooks to essays, to handouts. If we hear something we remember 20% of it, and we retain 30% of what we see. A higher percentage of retention comes from seeing and hearing at the same time, which is 50%. Isn’t this crazy? Lectures, videos, and textbooks aren’t the best way to learn. We need a method to bring the percentages up when it comes to education, and we’ll factor in this biological aspect of humans: we retain around 80% of what we personally experience, and immersive VR creates the experiential effect we need.
Let’s look at how it works. The most notable feature when one is engaged in immersive VR is the headset. The main elements of a VR headset are a stereoscopic head-mounted display and head motion tracking sensors.
Simulating the 3rd Dimension
Stereoscopic head-mounted displays are devices worn on the head that have a display in front of each eye of the user in order to present images in 3D depth by stereopsis. Humans are binocular creatures, and stereopsis is the concept where depth is perceived by the brain when there is a combination of visual stimuli from both eyes.
When applied to VR, the same images are shown on both screens to produce the stereopsis effects for users. The importance of stereoscopic displays is how it adds the extra dimension to what we see.
For example, when we view a flatscreen TV or an iPad, there’s a clear line between reality and computer-generated displays, because 2-dimensional things are completely different from the 3-dimensional reality we live in. That’s why stereoscopic displays keep us more engaged in what is shown on the headset screens. However, no matter how realistic an image seems, you won’t feel like you’re experiencing the image if it stays the same so our spatial awareness has to be aligned with the virtual environment.
Aligning Spatial Awareness
When you put on a VR headset and move your head to the left, your display shifts to the left accordingly to show a new part of your virtual environment. The same goes for the right, up, and down, because the motion of your head is tracked in order to align your spatial awareness with the VR’s 3D environment. This way, you aren’t restricted in what you can see with a VR headset on for 360 degrees.
Head motion tracking, the process where the recording of your head’s movement is applied to make changes to the components of images displayed in the headset, is what allows this to work in VR.
Motion trackers typically track only your head movement which results in the 3 degrees of freedom (3 motions tracked): pitch (x-axis), yaw (y-axis), and roll (z-axis). The movements (specifically rotations) of your head along these three axes are what determine how your perspective of the simulated world is changed. This feature of VR holds great significance to deceiving your brain into believing what you see is a reality because just like in real-life, movement allows you to form better awareness of how your environment is spatially laid out, and explore without restrictions in what you can see around you. The combination of both stereoscopic displays and head motion trackers complete the framework of putting people in an immersive environment.
Topping Basics
After the foundations are laid, the VR experience is leveled up rapidly with features like VR controllers and bodysuits.
VR controllers are hand-held devices users use to command their headset to switch simulated environments and interact with objects in their environment. It’s a feature that uses the typical process where the device sends data to the central processing unit of the headset the controller is paired with. Being able to interact with the simulated environment adds on another layer of illusion to how real VR is because we interact with objects in real-life too.
VR suits are wearable devices that isolate the user’s body from the external world by using sensory-based systems (haptics or tactile feedback), to control what user’s feel. Right now, touch sensors and haptic actuators (technology that allows devices to transmit information to the user by their sense of touch) are combined in order to recreate touch artificially.
Internally, it works when magnetic vibrations create sensations on the skin of a user when a magnetic and mechanical contraption is triggered. VR can be enhanced to the point where we can create a completely immersive environment with sight, stereo sound, and even touch, so we can investigate any reality we virtualize.
Oxford Medical Simulation
Right now, Oxford Medical Simulation is already deploying VR to train healthcare professionals. When it comes to training, medical education has had trouble finding enough expert faculty to have the time, money, and space to train new medical learners.
With Oxford Medical Simulation, trainees use immersive VR headsets to enter virtual hospitals. Trainees practice taking the history of patients, examining them, investigating symptoms, diagnosing, and treating virtual patients. Trainees receive automated feedback on their approach, improvement over time, and guidance if they need extra help.
The solution of certain medical cases is visualized more clearly, information is shared in a more interactive and appealing way, and people can learn in an outside environment even though they stay in the same place. Along with the better engagement with the material people have to learn, education programs save time, money, and space!
Boeing’s Immersive Training
Speaking of space, let’s not space out on the fact that Boeing astronauts are being trained using immersive VR! The Starliner craft is planning to head to space, and its astronauts did not hold back in learning from personal experience before they are going to leave Earth.
Boeing is an aerospace company; the company which launched SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to the International Space Station (ISS) in May. Boring is now partnered with a VR company called Varjo. By creating a space experience using a combination of headsets and hand controls, Boeing is able to create a practice mission including the stages of pre-launch, docking, undocking, and landing. The astronauts practice maneuvering the control panel and even activate switches. They are running and learning through the expected space experience without needing to actually be in space.
The crew flight test will soon begin using the Varjo VR training system and the Starliner mission is expected in 2021. As the Covid-19 outbreak still affects the daily activities of companies currently, astronauts from Boeing are able to do remote training during quarantine before the mission due to the VR training program.
Download a Museum
Tons of knowledge on world history and visual explanation models are present in museums, but students don’t get many opportunities to actually go to them. Now, students across the globe can visit and tour museums by downloading museum tour platforms onto their VR headsets. They can zoom in to models, view the museum without dozens of crowds in each room, and enter wherever they like to explore parts of the museum they are interested in.
The National Museum of Natural History in Paris has a VR installation that allows visitors to learn the relationship between hundreds of species. The installation allows users to experience what it is like to be near the animal and how they sound. Now they are building a sea diving simulation!
Better with Augmented Reality
So maybe you don’t need a full-blown out-of-the-world experience. Don’t worry, we got you covered because you can have a full-blown in-the-world experience with AR! The advantage of AR is its accessibility compared to VR, and it has multiple types flexible to suit different purposes: Marker-based AR, marker-less AR, projection AR, and superimposition-based AR.
Marker-based AR
Let’s say your friend asks you to help him/her design their room. Given a wall of different-colored polka dots, you were instructed to stick a unicorn sticker on every purple dot. Therefore, before you stick a unicorn sticker to a polka dot, you have to recognize a purple polka dot. The purple polka dot is known as a predetermined marker when it comes to AR.
Marker-based AR is when image recognition is used to detect a certain marker and the marker causes specific computer-generated content. When the camera of a device detects a marker (purple polka dot), it layers computer-generated content onto the environment through the device (sticks a sticker). The computer-generated content also continues to be displayed on the device no matter which part of the environment the camera is facing like seeing your unicorn stickers stay in the same place no matter which direction you are looking at them from.
Currently, marker-based AR is being tested out in placing markers on textbook pages. This way, if people or specifically students have devices with an AR program, they would be able to identify textbook markers with their device as they try to understand written concepts. Not only does this make the learning more interactive during reading, but it also allows visual teaching to be enhanced digitally.
Markerless AR
Markerless AR is exactly what it sounds like, you don’t need to spot a purple polka dot to place a sticker. Markerless AR allows users to place virtual objects wherever they’d like in their environment. You can stick those unicorn stickers on the blue polka dots, yellow polka dots, green polka dots, etc. That’s for you to decide.
Projection AR
Ok, so what if you want to stick one of those awesome stickers on your friend’s shirt? Instead, you would use projected AR, a type of AR where digital projections are laid onto the physical world. That polka dot wall is a digital device, and sticking the stickers outside of the wall is applying them to your physical environment. Projection AR is one of the simplest types of AR because it revolves around projecting the light on a surface, but it is unique due to how one can interact with the actual projection.
The Army Research Lab worked on a project that allowed people to create realistic terrains with the use of projection AR. When you move the sand in the sandtable, the pro-cam setup, and projector pick up change and project different colors onto different parts of the sandtable terrain to indicate the height of parts of the map in real-time. These sandtables have been used for education and military planning purposes for years and are still prominent.
Superimposition-based AR
Superimposition is when you layer one thing over another and superimposition AR is when you layer computer-generated displays on top of an object seen by a device’s camera. The entire or a part of the object could be replaced by an augmented version of it. Historical tours are enhanced by superimposition AR as it allows direct visual contrast between places as they appear in modern-day time and replace it with what locations originally looked like historically.
Rumbling Growth
For 2020, the VR market is estimated at 6.1 billion USD and is expected to reach 20.9 billion USD in the next 5 years. On the other hand, the global AR market is expected to grow 74.9% in compound annual growth rate between 2016 and 2024, reaching 100.2 billion USD by 2024.
Vive and Oculus are now honing their creation of virtual meetings and gatherings. People from around the world could interact and share ideas in any environment they want by experiencing the first-person 3D views of virtual characters. Unity is building platforms that allow others to build and design VR applications while WorldViz is putting their focus on helping businesses train and research with collaborative VR spaces and interactive visual analytics.
Apple currently has the world’s largest AR platform with millions of devices that are AR-enabled and is developing AR glasses estimated to launch in mid-2021 or 2022. Nomtek is producing more kits for AR development, Zappar is threading information to hundreds of products using markers, and 4Experience is working on projects such as using AR in shopping and marketing.
It’s growth right now is like the rumbling earthquake before a tsunami! Companies like Vive, Oculus, Unity, and WorldViz are picking up the pace in implementing and developing VR through their research. Apple, Nomtek, Zappar, and 4Experience are also increasing their quality of AR innovations. VR and AR are going to be everywhere, and soon people will get to investigate and learn optimally and without limits.
TL;DR
- Immersive virtual reality (VR) is a 3D environment generated by computers that allow users to interact with simulated reality.
- Augmented reality (AR) is the technology that allows us to layer digital information and virtual displays onto the real world.
- VR, which allows simulated personal experiences, help humans retain around 70% more of what they are trying to learn rather than reading.
- The main elements of a VR headset are a stereoscopic head-mounted display and head motion tracking sensors.
- Oxford Medical Simulation is already deploying VR to train healthcare professionals.
- Boeing astronauts are being trained using immersive VR.
- Students can download virtual museums into VR headsets.
- Four main types of AR: Marker-based AR, marker-less AR, projection AR, and superimposition-based AR.
- The VR market is expected to reach 20.9 billion USD in the next 5 years.
- The global AR market is expected to reach 100.2 billion USD by 2024.
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