Speaker 1: When Apple announced the iPhone eight and iPhone ten, the
Speaker 1: company emphasized the new handsets augmented reality features. Could Apple
Speaker 1: be the shot in the arm for mixed reality? This
Speaker 1: is Tech Stuff Daily and I'm Jonathan Strickland. Back in
Speaker 1: the ninety nineties, virtual reality was becoming a big buzzword.
Speaker 1: Personal computers had emerged from hobbyist markets and entered the
Speaker 1: mainstream consciousness. People were just finding their way onto the Internet,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like technology would have no limits. In
Speaker 1: no time, we'd be zapping ourselves or some virtual representation
Speaker 1: of ourselves into a virtual environment and explore the Internet
Speaker 1: as if it were the real world. You probably know
Speaker 1: how that turned out. VR technology lacked the sophistication and
Speaker 1: required too many concessions to make that scenario realistic. Instead,
Speaker 1: we got simple games filled with crude polygons and other
Speaker 1: relatively lackluster experiences. People quickly lost interest and confidence in
Speaker 1: this supposedly transformative technology. Funding for VR projects seemed to
Speaker 1: follow the flagging interest, and the computer scientists, designers, and
Speaker 1: engineers who might have been able to urge VR closer
Speaker 1: to what people wanted found themselves in search of other projects.
Speaker 1: The whole discipline was put on the back burner for
Speaker 1: many years. Flash forward a few decades and now things
Speaker 1: are different. Not only do we have dedicated devices like
Speaker 1: the Oculus Rift or HTC Vibe to handle VR, but
Speaker 1: also an increasing number of smartphones can run various virtual
Speaker 1: reality applications as well. A secondary industry of smartphone case
Speaker 1: manufacturers sprung up around this trend, allowing you to strap
Speaker 1: a smartphone right in front of your eyeballs. A new
Speaker 1: host of games and experiences have popped up in the
Speaker 1: VR space as well. Some of them allow you to
Speaker 1: explore an exotic landscape, while others pit you in ferocious
Speaker 1: combat against foes is like zombies or dinosaurs or zombie dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Then there's augmented reality or a R. This technology has
Speaker 1: also been around for a few decades. Instead of substituting
Speaker 1: a computer generated world in place of our real one,
Speaker 1: augmented reality overlays digital information on top of our physical environments.
Speaker 1: Imagine looking at a wall and using an a R
Speaker 1: app to see where all the wiring goes. It would
Speaker 1: almost seem like you had X ray vision, but really
Speaker 1: you're just looking at a digital representation of that wiring.
Speaker 1: VR and a are are big parts of what people
Speaker 1: are now calling mixed reality. Think of mixed reality as
Speaker 1: a spectrum. On one end, you have an almost completely
Speaker 1: real physical environment with just some digital information incorporated into
Speaker 1: it in some intrinsic way. On the other end, you
Speaker 1: have a holy virtual environment filled with computer generated images
Speaker 1: and experiences. Mixed reality can incorporate all sorts of user
Speaker 1: interfaces as well, from dedicated controls to voice commands, to
Speaker 1: eye tracking technology, to mapping physical objects in the area
Speaker 1: to virtual ones in the experience. But despite this evolution
Speaker 1: of the art, mixed reality hasn't made great strides into
Speaker 1: the consumer market. It's mostly the plaything of early adopters
Speaker 1: and people with a lot of disposable income. That's partly
Speaker 1: because the requirements for good mixed reality experiences tend to
Speaker 1: be pretty high. If you want a dedicated system, you're
Speaker 1: typically talking about a headset and controls that will run
Speaker 1: several hundred dollars, plus a sophisticated PC capable of providing
Speaker 1: the processing needed to handle the graphics and physics engines.
Speaker 1: Such a computer will run you another thousand dollars easy.
Speaker 1: For that reason, much of the development and mixed reality
Speaker 1: has been dedicated to specific systems and integrations that aren't
Speaker 1: really suitable for the consumer market. Think of things like
Speaker 1: R and D labs and manufacturing facilities, or larger entertainment
Speaker 1: complex is like arcades or amusement parks. Smartphones are changing that,
Speaker 1: and Apple's moved to embrace the technology could be the
Speaker 1: push the industry needs to hit the big time. It's
Speaker 1: not that other smartphones can't handle VR and A R.
Speaker 1: Android phones like Google's Pixel fall into that category as well,
Speaker 1: but Apple's devoted fan base, which is known for their
Speaker 1: app store purchases, makes all the difference. To put it
Speaker 1: another way, there are way more Android devices on the
Speaker 1: market than iOS devices. According to the analytics company stat Counter,
Speaker 1: Android devices account for more than seventy percent of all
Speaker 1: the mobile devices in the world. Apple's iOS devices hover
Speaker 1: around twenty percent of the market. However, until Apple's app
Speaker 1: store generated more revenue than the Google Play app store,
Speaker 1: so even though there are fewer Apple devices out in
Speaker 1: the wild, Apple device owners spend more money on apps
Speaker 1: than Android owners. Google had more than three times as
Speaker 1: many gadgets and consumer hands but Apple was generating more
Speaker 1: app revenue anyway. That's a powerful story with Apple's move
Speaker 1: to supporting augmented reality. This could mean we'll see a
Speaker 1: burst of development in the space. There's money to be
Speaker 1: made there, which will fund lots more research and development. This,
Speaker 1: in turn, could have a ripple effect across the industry
Speaker 1: and gently push it into the mainstream market. It's too
Speaker 1: early to declare mixed reality out of the woods. The
Speaker 1: technology has entered the public consciousness before, only to suffer
Speaker 1: tremendous setbacks when the general public realized the technology wasn't
Speaker 1: nearly as far along as they had anticipated. But with
Speaker 1: more standalone devices able to support mixed reality implementations, even
Speaker 1: limited ones, we may finally see this move out of
Speaker 1: the realm of research facilities and industrial use cases and
Speaker 1: into day to day life. To learn more about mixed reality,
Speaker 1: be sure to subscribe to the tech Stuff podcast, where
Speaker 1: we exp more topics like this in detail. You never
Speaker 1: wondered how the large Hadron collider works, or you want
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Speaker 1: every Wednesday and Friday. That's all for me for now,
Speaker 1: See you next time.