People often ask, what the difference in VR devices?
Let’s find out!
What is the Difference in VR Devices?
The first thing you should know is that there are two types of VR devices: Cardboard and GearVR.
A cardboard is a simple cardboard box with lenses on both sides. It can be used to view 360-degree videos or photos.
GearVR is an Android phone with a built-in screen that has been modified for use as a virtual reality headset.
Augmented Reality (AR) vs. Virtual Reality (VR): What’s the Difference?
Both “virtual” and “augmenting” are often used interchangeably. However, both refer to technologies that create an immersive experience for the user.
They both sound similar, but they’re two very different ideas. One has characteristics that easily set it apart from the other.
What Is Virtual Reality?
VR headsets completely take away your vision so that you feel like you’re somewhere else.
These headsets block out your surroundings when you’re wearing them.
If you put them back on after turning them off, you might think that you’re blindfolded again.
Once the headset turns on, however, the display screens inside are refracted by their respective lens to fill your field of view with whatever content they’re displaying.
You can use VR for anything from gaming to watching movies to shopping. When you put on a headset, you enter a virtual reality where everything looks different than it would if you were looking at it through a screen.
6DOF motion tracking is used by tethered VR headset systems, such as the Index, and standalone VR headset systems, such as the Quest 2.
That technology comes from external sensors or camera systems for the Index and PlayStation VR, or outward-facing camera systems for the Quest 2.
These headsets don’t just detect where you’re looking, they also track any movements you make in those directions, too.
With this combination of hardware and software, you can move around in a virtual world, using virtual hands.
It’s usually limited to a small area, but it’s much better than just standing still and staring at things.
One downside is that you must be careful not to trip on any cables connecting the headphones to your computer or game console.
For both games and applications, virtual reality takes you away from where you are physical. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing a game or using an application.
You might be able to play video games from the cockpit of a starfighter or virtually visit faraway destinations as if you were actually there.
There are lots of possibilities for virtual reality, and they all involve changing everything around you into something else.
What Is Augmented Reality?
Augmented realities (AR) devices, such as the HoloLens and various enterprises’ smart glasses, let you see everything in front of you as if you were looking through a weak pair of glasses.
The tech is designed for free movement while projecting images over whatever we look at.
The concept expands to smartphone applications and games, such as Pokémon Go, which uses our phones’ cameras to track our surroundings and overlays additional information onto them, on the screen.
Augmented reality (AR) displays can provide something as basic as showing the time, to something complex as holographic images floating in midair.
Pokemon Go shows a Pokemon on your phone’s screen, on top of anything else you’re looking at.
Meanwhile, the HoloLens and other smart headsets allow you to virtually place floating apps and 3D decorations around yourself.
Compared with virtual reality, this technology has a distinct disadvantage: a lack of visual immersiveness.
While VR completely covers your entire visual range, AR applications only appear on your smartphone or tablet display, and even the Holo Lens can only project images in an area in front of your face.
When a holographic image appears in the middle of your field of view, or when you’re forced to look at a small display while trying to pretend that the image on that display is actually in the real world, it doesn’t feel very realistic.
With basic augmented reality (AR) that overlays simple information onto what you’re seeing, you don’t need any special hardware for 3D tracking.
Most augmented reality (AR) applications require six degrees of freedom (6DOF), which means they track your physical position so the application can maintain consistent positions for its projected 3D objects.
This is why the Hololens has a stereoscopic camera and an advanced tracking system, and why more advanced smartphone devices use multiple front-facing cameras to track distance.
Augmented Reality (AR) has nearly endless potential. Phone-powered AR software has been able to recognize surroundings and provide additional information about what it recognizes for years now, offering live translations of text or pop-ups of restaurant ratings as you view them.
With dedicated augmented reality (AR) headsets, such as the Microsoft HoloLens, you can actually place different applications as floating windows around you, giving you a modular, multi-monitor, computer experience.
At present, augmented reality (AR) is only widely available on mobile devices, and doesn’t have quite the visual impact of enterprise-grade AR displays. This means that AR is still very limited for now until a consumer AR headgear is released.
The Difference Between AR and VR
Augmented realities replace real life by adding something extra to it.
Augmented realities (AR) add to our perception of the world by adding information to what we see. Both AR and VR are powerful technologies that have yet to make their marks with consumers, but they show a lot of promise for the future.
They could completely transform how we use computers in our daily lives, but whether they will be successful is anyone’s guess at present.
What is Mixed Reality (MR)?
MR (or Mixed Reality) sits somewhere between AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality). There are three main types of XR technologies.
The second is through smartphones or augmented reality (AR) wearables with virtual objects and avatars superimposed into real-life environments, or possibly vice versa.
The Pokémon Go mobile app, which took the world (and especially the United States) by surprise back in 2016, overlaps virtual Pokémon in real-life environments using a smartphone camera.
It’s often touted as a revolutionary augmented reality (AR) experience, but it’s actually an excellent demonstration of mixed reality (MR), which blends real-world objects with computer-generated ones.
Mixed reality is also starting to be applied to enable VR real-life players to be superimposed onto video game streams to add real-life personalities to gaming live streams.
Conclusion
We hope that this article was helpful. If you have any queries feel free to reach out in the comments section below.
