So PRSONAS Chief Innovation Officer, Chuck Rinker and I are embroiled in a conversation about virtual reality versus augmented reality versus mixed reality. And after several minutes of this, a co-worker gives us another kind of reality, the reality check when she says:
And this matters BECAUSE????
A great question which I’ll try to answer for my co-worker and all of you in this post.
First, those terms are NOT interchangeable.
Let’s call Virtual Reality the Swimming Pool. You dive in by putting on a helmet or walking into a darkened theater. You sit on the bottom of the pool with all your senses submerged in this altered world. Now quickly drain the water and fill the pool digitally. Experience it to the same level of involvement. That is virtual reality.
Want a demo? Grab your credit card and check out the new OCULUS RIFT gaming head gear on Amazon. Boil down the product description and you get : OCULUS RIFT technology enables the sensation of presence.
On the other hand, Augmented Reality is like a Diamond Necklace. It adds sparkle to what already exists. Think of the moving 1st & 10 line on TV football games, or the digital heads up displays in cars or fighter jets.
For example, take a look at this augmented reality project done by our sister-company, NuMedia, for Arizona Iced Tea. Shaquille O’Neal is a big personality, worth watching in his own right. But when the Arizona can opens up and you’re playing ball with Shaq–now that’s a mighty big diamond.
Finally, think back to 3rd grade and that Big Red Eraser you enjoyed so much. Use it to blur the lines between the Virtual World and Digital World. What you have now is Mixed Reality, a blending of the two. That’s what we do at PRSONAS, only we use holograms to blur the lines.
Other firms are achieving mixed reality with headsets. Check out Microsoft’s Hololens demo (and prepare to be wowed).
At PRSONAS we project our holograms into the real world–no headsets required.
Take a look at one of our units in action (AND THE REACTION) in Microsoft’s flagship Seattle store.
Which brings us back to the original question: All this matters BECAUSE?
It matters because the 3 realities described here (virtual, augmented, mixed) are very different human experiences. And experience comes first at PRSONAS. That end-user experience, that customer journey, is what we build our product around.
What can we do for you?
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