What in the world is augmented reality?

a little listener mail. Yeah, and this listener mail comes from Crystal. Crystal says augmented reality. What in the world is it? Thank you, Crystal for that very concise listener mail. She probably figured you'd make up another paragrapher said, uh yeah, considering. So we've received some some novellas recently. There they've been excellent, guys, We love them. Don't don't that as a dig, because I think that's awesome that you guys take so much

effort to write as listener mail. And Crystal, that's awesome that you were able to sum it up in one sentence long or short. We love the listener mail. Yeah, you're all awesome. So anyway, augmented realitmented reality one the world is it? You know what? I didn't really know either, Um, I knew, I knew just the barest minimum of what it was. Yeah, we can give you like the the

the bird's eye definition of augmented reality. The real idea here is that you are overlaying some sort of information on top of our perception of the world around us in real time. Yes, we're not talking about virtual reality, in which you replace the real reality with a institute and uh, you know see if you're um, coffee drinkers can tell the difference, right, the But the worlds of augmented reality and virtual reality do have a lot of overlap.

There's a lot of technology that um, that belongs in both realms, uh, including things like head mald displays often are used in both augmented reality and virtual reality applications. Yes, except in in virtual reality, Um, the glasses that you wear replace you don't really actually see anything but this virtual world. And in augmented reality, you do see the virtual world with other information layered on top of it. I'm sorry, you're right, you see the real world with

other information layered on top of it. Right. If you were the virtual world with other information layered on top of it, it would be augmented virtual reality. Can we invent that patent pending? All right, no one else out there grab it? That's us. Yes, So augmented reality. Uh. You know, ideally, what you would have is some sort of system where you could look at, say a building, and you would have information pop up that might give you things like the address of the building that you're

looking at any businesses that are located within that building. If, for example, you were looking at a restaurant, you might see reviews pop up and you could see what kind of food that restaurant serves without having to actually go up there and look at a menu, or if they had really poor reviews, and you can think, oh well, let's just skip that and find something else. Um. I mean that's just a very basic application. There are unlimited

applications for augmented reality. Sure, I mean, you know it's not you could you could use it for something like that. You can use it for business purposes. Maybe you're on a business trip and you need information like that. Um. Sad to say. You could also use it for military purposes. Actually,

the military is already using this technology. It's in a lot of visor displays for jet pilots, for example, so that they are coupling the the helmet technology with augmented reality so that you can do things like track h other other aircraft. You can look at targets, things like that heads up display. Yes, an h U d ye heads up it's actually had that for quite some times. Yeah, it's been around for a while now. That's not unusual. Just like virtual reality, augmented reality has a lot to uh,

a lot to to owe the military establishment. UM, military applications have fed the research and development of this kind of technology for years, just like with virtual reality. And it makes sense because when you really think about you've got to think with any research project, there's one thing all research projects need, no matter what the project is. Money. Yes, the money has to come from somewhere. And academic research

institutions they have a limited budget. You know, they have a limited amount of money that they can they can dole out to any particular department UM and all of them are vying for that same pool of cash and UH, and so there's a very limited amount of money you can get for for pure research research for research sake, UM, You're more likely to see money come in from any sort of practical application, So things like the military, where

practical app location can mean the difference between losing and winning a conflict or saving hundreds of people's lives. UH, that's obviously going to take a larger priority than just a a important but kind of esoteric academic project. UM. You would also probably see it in corporate UH functions

as well. Things that things where companies think they can make some money off of an augmented reality application, whether that's something that's in a car, like perhaps you were able to create a screen within your car so that as you're driving down the street, a little display what can tell you things are that are coming up, like where the next gas station is. That's funny you would mention that I was thinking of Dash. Yeah, that's a

good example. UM. Dash is a company that was recently acquired by Research in Motion, who you might be aware made the BlackBerry UM. When they start it out, they were making a very sophisticated and also very large GPS def ice called the Dash Express UM and John Fuller wrote an excellent article about it on the website. Unfortunately, he also wrote it the very same week that Dash announced that they weren't gonna make hardware anymore, and we

had to edit the article before it went live. UM But basically, the technology combines GPS and UM information about that area so that you can be driving along the street and say, man, I could really use a cup of coffee right now, and it will tell you, well, hey, there's McDonald's on your left, there's a Starbucks on the right, A couple of blocks down the street, around the corner, there's a local coffee shop. UM. Or you could say I'm looking for a gas station and it's it will

give you that information in real time. Also traffic information, so that kind of but that's not UM at least, the Dash Express wasn't showing you in a heads up display like you might see a fighter pilot might use. Although I know that they have dabbled with heads up displays and cars for again in years, I just don't

see an awful lot of them. Yeah. The closest thing you tend to see in cars these days are things like um uh night vision applications, where you can you can have suddenly the windshield turns into like a screen with night visions that you can see an infrared or ultra violet as opposed to using headlights, which I guess would be very useful for law enforcement officers, um be kind of scary for anyone else if they don't have their headlights on. But uh so that that's one kind

of application there. But of course there that's that's more night vision. That's not really augmented reality because you're not really adding any information to the display. And uh and in a lot of ways, augmented reality has kind of shifted to the mobile device market now. In the traditional idea of what augmented reality would be, uh, it was much more kind of sci fi. The idea was that you would have like a pair of glasses that you put on, and those glasses, you know, they look like

stylish sunglasses. So you're just you know, hitting the towel and being a Hollywood schmooz um. But you're really looking around and you're seeing different, you know, facts and figures about the the area around you. It's just that it's on a screen that's you know, transparent, so you can look through the information. Um, so you're not blinded. Because I mean, that's obviously an important element in augmented reality.

You've gotta have it so that the information is there if you want to read it, but it's also possible for you to ignore it and look at the real world. Otherwise you may not be able to react when someone's throwing a punch at you because you're a Hollywood schmooze, and they will because you know, if my nose could tell you stories. But the the other elements that have to be in place here. You have to have certain things to to allow an augmented reality system to work.

All right. You have to have some sort of tracking system, so it has to know where you are looking, otherwise it can't display the relevant information. It has to have some sort of video feed or graphic generation so that it can create the things that you're gonna be looking at. And it has to have some sort of database of information to draw upon to to populate the fields so when you're looking around, it's actually giving you information you need.

So so you don't actually need a sophisticated piece of eyewear to do this with or a camera on top of your head, although you could do in early systems. You know when some imagine quite expensive systems do have that. Yeah, if you look at early augmented augmented reality systems. They tend to like really big rigs with a huge head mounted display, and you know, it's it's meant to be portable because it doesn't do you much good to have

a fixed augmented reality station. You can't. You know, you just be able to look at the stuff that's immediately around you, and that's it. But the problem is that, you know, carrying all that around, the power supply cables and everything, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. So the mobile device market really makes a lot more sense to me. For thing, it takes away that that fear that suddenly you're gonna, you know, be focusing on the information in your glasses as opposed to

the oncoming car. You know, that's a to me, that's a legitimate thing to worry about, because I mean, I know that I don't know about you, but I've been walking down the street before looking at my phone, reading Twitter messages and then suddenly realized that I was about to walk into a telephone poll. Yeah, you know, there is actually an iPhone application that uses the camera on the other side of the phone um and it will show you what's on the other side of your phone

as you are working on it. Now, this is a problem for me because I have an iPod Touch which has no camera, right, so you're still you're still blind now. So the nice thing about the mobile devices is that you can take one element completely out of the the whole augmented reality issue, which is the idea that you no longer necessarily that camera. You don't need something to be able to look through because you're able to easily, you know, set the mobile device to the side and

look around yourself. Um, what you do need is something that tells the device where it is and how it's oriented. So it has to have some sort of accelerometer so it knows which way it's facing asset or or which way it's you know, facing in the sense of is it is it portrait or landscape mode. You have to have some sort of GPS system so it knows the geographic location, and you need some sort of compass really to know which direction you're facing at any given time.

This is starting to sound like something I'm sort of familiar with actually, how so, Um, basically the smartphone that most people have in their pockets these days, or the HTCG one. Yes, the HTCG one does have a compass, GPS and accelerometer, and the iPhone yeah, that's that also. Ran also willing to bet without a whole lot of additional detail, that Rim might have a reason for wanting to acquire dash. Yeah. Yeah, the iPhone three, we should say,

has the compass. Yes, that's true, that's so. But I mean that more and more smartphones are starting to have these things built in. And uh, you may already have the makings of at least the basic augmented reality in your pocket right now. Well you happen to, but yeah, I don't so. Um. Yeah, there's actually an application right now for the iPhone that you can get that uses an augmented reality application. I think there are many, but there's one that made the news recently, right, but there

they do it in varying degrees, right. The one I'm talking about is yelp and oh yeah, And the interesting thing to me is that the augmented reality function was a hidden feature. It wasn't designed. You know, if you were just using Yelp normally, I wouldn't even know necessarily

that it was that it was working. So let's say you've got Yelp and you're walking down the street and then you um, you shake your phone three times while Yelp is running, it'll activate a secret feature called Monocle, and Monocle will give you a little overlay of the various places that are around you and tell you information

about them. And the main thing would be like restaurants and and ratings, obviously, so you could hold your iPhone up and and point it at the h the pub that's across the street from you, and and read the reviews, and you might see that, hey, you know, the staff here is really friendly. They've got live music every night, and the food is great, and I think, awesome, I'll

walk in and I'll have dinner there. Or you might see something like the the owner throws profanity at people left and right, and occasionally a fight breaks out for no apparent reason, and and there's a honky tonk piano player and who's missing some teeth in an eye, and you're thinking, you know what, that doesn't sound like what I want to do tonight, or maybe you're thinking, hey, that sounds exactly what I want to do tonight. But the point being that the application lets you make those

kind of decisions right now. That's just again another very basic form of augmented reality. And it also blends in well with your your theory, your conspiracy theory about the iPhone and how they're just encouraging people to make applications that suggest you should shake it, throw it across the room, break it and by anyone. I call it the the wee phenomenon, we mote phenomenon where yeah, you you you're shaking the phone with all your might because you really

want this thing to give you kay. And the next thing you know, you've just tossed it thirty feet and it's then it explodes as we have seen. You know, I iPhones and iPods can't explode if put under x an incredible pressure. Apple says that's not their fault. Yes, they say it's because of incredible pressure. It's not. It's just the way. Yeah know, we're both about to explode.

We're both under incredible pressure now the Yeah, So that is part of my conspiracy theory that Apple, or at least some some application developers possibly in league with Apple, are trying to destroy iPhones. Watching right, so you have to go out and buy another one. I bought touches either. We should totally do a tech conspiracy theories podcast. We've talked about that. We actually have it on the list. Tech conspiracies is on our list of topics to cover.

We just haven't hit it yet. So if any of you really want to hear a tech conspiracy podcast, write us and let us know and uh, and we'll bump that up the list. Think of a couple more than that we already like the ones that we're inventing as we go along. Maybe some that actually have other people believing them besides us. I mean we might have convinced some people today. Let's get back to our men a reality.

We we boy talk about a rat hole. Actually, there are other applications, um that I can think of, um around here one of them. Um. There there are some that basically will use your information. Uh. Even even iPod users can find it because you can. It will use your WiFi information to get a rough idea of where you are. And then if you kind of tell what's going on and and say, well, you know, if you're looking for a restaurant around here, here's the place you

can go. If you're looking for shopping. You know, it doesn't overlay information like augmented reality like we've been talking about, does but it does give you perspective on what's around you, and that that does make a difference. It does augment reality and some capacity, just not as thoroughly as it's

not assarily immersive as the other option. Right and just down the street from us, Uh, there's the Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Laboratory, and they prefer they prefer augmented environment to augmented reality. Uh. It is because it captures our interest augmenting the user's perception and emphasizes our focus on

the interaction between the user and their environment. UM. I can kind of understand that it's sort of similar to the way virtual reality experts prefer virtual environments now because the well, I mean, I'm not suggesting that this is why augmented reality changed, you know why they they are

shying away from the term. But for virtual reality at any rate, it's because virtual reality got overhyped in the nineties and then kind of collapsed in on itself once the public realized that their perception of what virtual reality was and the reality of what virtual reality was were had a huge gap. And once that huge gap was realized, everyone's like, oh, is that all it is an interest

completely disappeared. So then you had all these virtual reality people saying, you know what, let's change the name of what we do because it has a stigma on it. Now I'm guessing the same sort of thing applies to some people who have been working in augmented reality, because it's a term that's been around for a while. Well, one of the neat things that one of the projects they had that um, I'm actually really curious about his

was for Oakland Cemeteries Sunday in the Park event. Now, Oakland Cemetery is an historic cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where we are, and uh, it's a phenomenal cemetery. Actually suffered severe damage in the tornado that hit us, you know, several months ago, many many many months ago. Um, and it's sort of I think it's pretty much recovered

from that at this point. But yeah, they had a Sunday in the Park event where the some of the people from the Augmented Environment Lab showed up and had a Voices of Oakland project where it was an audio only augmented reality experience where you would tour the cemetery and hear stories by a ghost. Wow. So as you as you moved through the cemetery, the appropriate audio would play on its own. And I'm thinking this is brilliant. I would love to see this used again for for

a Halloween ghost to Worth of Oakland Cemetery. It would be amazing use of theater and technology. Now I'm a big theater person, so for me, this is really exciting because I think of it in terms of performance. And of course that's just one small project, but I thought that was really neat that that was the sort of thing they were They were looking at applications that would

really get people interested in the technology. That's true. I mean it's just gonna be I think it's gonna be one of those things that in fiction it's going to be a big to do. You know, you're gonna see it on TV and in the movies, and it's gonna be all high tech and stuff. But in reality, it's gonna just trickle out piece by piece until it can

become more of a more affordable. Yeah, you you kind of see it the technology, because I don't think people are gonna want to walk around with you know, special glasses in a big camera on top of their heads. Yeah, the way, the way, the way it's usually shown in television is not with special glasses or anything, but it's always like holograms and things like that, things that are we're still many many years is away from perfecting the technology necessary to get even the most basic form of

what they're showing as being commonplace and television. But that's TV for you, you know, I mean, you gotta you gotta take siliberties. If you were to show the real augmented reality as it stands now, I think a lot of people would just be bored. Well right then, kind of like you are. Yeah, well no I'm not bored. I don't really have anything else to add. Okay, Well then I guess that moves us on to our segment of listener mail. Now, this listener mail was sent to

us from someone who signed it as London. Now I could city possibly if so, they are very verbose. Um, I could say the name that was on the email, but I'm not gonna because it wasn't in the actual signature. So I'm just gonna call this person London, this girl lady London, I guess because she refers to herself as

a lassie at one point. Now London wrote us a very long and thoughtful response to our our podcast on video game systems, and I'm just going to read a section of it, because if I were to do the full letter, it would be a podcast all on its own. When I was a wee lassie of seventeen, all my friends had great computers and systems it was, and my top level console was a first generation Nintendo and the

old Attari I had from my Nanni's house. Now, I guess I make up for my childhood poverty with the fact that I have a top of the line alien Ware computer and each of the three consoles out at the moment we Xbox three, sixty p S three. Listening to your podcast, I reflected on what I use each system for and thought maybe this would help you too, since you were thinking of getting another system, so this I thought I'd share this because our listeners may be

thinking the same thing. The Xbox is primary use in our house is as a media center, while the PS three has the same B center capabilities, the UI and general usability isn't nearly as good. I personally despise the Xbox controller, and in my opinion, no self respecting gamer can play a fighting game properly on that system. The only game I regularly play on the Xbox at the moment is Geometry Wars Evolved two and sometimes a rousing

game of un I'll skip around a little bit. UH. The p S three I didn't purchase till earlier this year after the price drop. The reason I ended up getting it is because it is one of the best Blu Ray players on the market. I was a little hesitant because of the lack of backwards compatibility, but I ended up keeping my PS two and just putting it in the bedroom. Turns out I pretty much never used

the PS two. Uh. Skipping around a little bit more down to the WE excuse me why I turned some pages the WE We originally got mainly for WE Sports, Mario Kart and rock Band. While they are fun games, I now own rock Band World Tour for the p S three. Should that itch strike and I found that now I've got a three six EMPs three, the WE sit silently and patiently off to the side. I can't honestly remember the last time I turned it on. I do think that WE is ideal for new gamers such

as my mother, who's still two finger types. I don't mean that negatively, just as a fact of the matter. First person shooters should always, in my opinion, be played on a computer keyboard plus mouse for life. By the way, a while back, I tried to download the Window seven preview podcast. YadA, YadA, YadA, everything's mixed up. We are working on that. I want to respond a little bit to London here. Uh. First of all, I really enjoy your city. But second of all, Um, First the Xbox controller,

you know she said she hated it. I love the Xbox controller. I hate the PlayStation controller. I have very long fingers and my hands are cramped when I use a PlayStation controller. No, I'm might after playing for half an hour, my hands feel like they're gonna fall off. They're just it's just too small. I like the Xbox controller, and I like that. I like the second generation original Xbox controller. Are you following me? The Xbox controller that came out with the very first Xbox is that was

that was almost as big as the console. That was a little too big even for me. But the one that came up it was enormous. The one that came out after that, I loved. It was the perfect size for my hands. Uh. Now, you're not picky or anything, are you. I'm a little but so she so. She also mentioned that first person shooter should always be played on a computer. I have to disagree on that one

as well. And the reason for that is that if you're using a mouse and a keyboard, most of the time, you're using the mouse with your right hand and you're using that to aim your your weapon, and you're using your left hand to move your character around, to strafe, to move forward, backwards, jump, all that kind of stuff. I'm left handed. I have never been able to use a left handed mouse because I've just always had computers that had the right hand mouse. So I've been stuck

using right handed mouse. Um, which means I can't aim very well. I can't. I don't have that precision with my right hand. So it's why we don't call you dead eye right. Yeah, I'm I'm not the person to hand a sniper rifle too in a game on a computer. Uh. The controller helps a lot when I'm playing on a console because a lot of these games have a little bit of an auto aim feature, so it helps you when you're turning your weapon around and you're trying to

fire on someone. Now, purists think that's terrible because they'd rather rely on their skill than on some sort of auto aim feature. People like me, who are at a disadvantage already in the game, appreciate the heck out of the auto aim feature because otherwise we would just spend the entire game getting shot in the head. And you're not the first person shooter player. That's why I didn't ask your opinion. So specialized controllers too, those are really cool. Yeah,

I've got one of those. I've got the first person shooter. That would be an advantage of having the computer. Yeah, I actually have a first person shooter controller that um that I was really really good at. But I haven't played Xbox in so long that I would have to relearn how to use it because it's been ages. But yeah, that was that helped even out the playing field just a little for me. Well, thank you so much London

for sending that email. And I know I did cut quite a bit out, but I did read the whole thing and I greatly appreciate it. And if any of you want to write us, please do. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. If you want to learn more about augmented reality. We have an article about how it will work because we're thinking more about the traditional lines and you never know what else might pop up. About various uh iPhone apps. You can find all that at how stuff works dot com.

Crispy and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com, And be sure to check out the new tech stuff now on the house stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you