I’m going to preface this by saying that I love VR. There’s something about video games that you can just get absolutely lost in such as Farpoint, or that singular Battlefront mission where every geek like me can live their dream of being an X-Wing pilot for about 20 mins that’s just absolutely amazing. Video Games, Movies, we all have out little escapes that we like that we can access right from the comfort of our own home. Then we have AR, Augmented Reality, which is a little more dicey, but it’s still really neat. Sadly the best experience that we have with AR it seems (for the moment at least) is still Pokemon Go. I would expect more over the next few years as it has only been a year since companies like Apple announced DevKits for AR.

But both of these technologies have way more to offer than gaming, could you imagine being an assembly line employee, wearing your MS Hololens, or Google Glass, and seeing exactly where, and how your part has to be assembled, step by step, with a holographic outline? Well, you don’t really have to imagine too much as the technology is already in play… at lease software wise. Boeing (in the previously linked article) is toying around with it a little bit, but the fact of the matter is that the data usage is astronomical using networked machines, needing quite a capable wireless access system, not to mention the computing power required. Sure, use within the manufacturing industry is going to be a lot less intensive than gaming, you’re not rendering full 3D, 360 degree worlds (180 at a time, but the other 180 has to be rendered as you move), NPC’s, and whatever else is needed for the particular game, however you will have to render a part, instructions, and likely text displays as well, which isn’t going to be a small task still. What I think of is the potential when it comes to training – you still have someone shadowing to demonstrate company process, tricks of the trade, etc., however with AR glasses, or even just utilizing an AR application on a phone or tablet, you’re able to be 100% walked through, with step by step instructions in front of your face, which should alleviate any question of the actual assembly process exponentially.

I think the real test for this technology is going to be the gaming world though, as a lot of things are. If you can win over the gamers with a solid design, reasonable price, and a peak performance, you’ll be able to win over most anybody else as the gaming community tends to be very meticulous when it comes to new computer technology, and perfection within it. AR maybe not as much – when the calibration of the Z axis within AR begins to finally remain in a stable location, and not continually drift, I think that’s when it will become fully accepted as a daily piece of technology, but until then, there’s still some work to do. When it comes to VR, I believe that technology will never fully get past gaming and entertainment. Sure, training videos could be a good idea with this, but AR is really where enterprise will thrive, VR is too disconnected. In the world that we live in today, eternally connected to one another, for someone to be able to put on a headset and be in their own separate world, it’s not personal enough. We interact day to day, minute to minute, either over the phone, or face to face – whether it be IRL, or via Skype, Lync, WebEx or what have you. We will use VR for our immersive escapes, or for photos, or videos of prior vacations we took, but never any more.

What do you think? Is AR the wave of the future for enterprise, or is that a technology that is going to lay down where it is too?