Top Augmented Reality (AR) Service Providers in Singapore

Augmented Reality: Concise Definition

Augmented reality (AR) describes certain experiences involving designers enhancing portions of users’ physical environment by adding computer-generated content.

Designers craft content—varying between sound and video, to graphics and GPS overlays or others—encompassing digital content that reacts within real-time to modifications within the user’s environment, usually action.

AR’s Position Within the Environment of Concrete Reality

Augmented reality contains science-fiction influences documented from 1901.

Still, Thomas Caudell categorized the idea as a technology only from 1990 upon drafting designs that enable Boeing workers to visualize aircraft constructs.

Some huge progress arrived in 1992 with Louis Rosenberg’s advanced Virtual Fixtures AR construct for the US Air Force.

AR inventions emerged within the retail arena, most significantly the ARQuake game (2000) or the design program ARToolkit (2009).

The 2010s saw a technological renaissance—for instance, including Microsoft’s HoloLens within 2015—which transcended mere AR in the traditional format, with AR software independently growing progressively advanced, desired, or cost-friendly.

Within the umbrella term extended reality (XR), AR diverges from virtual reality (VR) or mixed reality (MR).

Certain confusion lingers, especially between AR or MR.

Increasingly with the 2020s’ technology boom, much controversy persists over content that separate terms describe.

Within user experience (UX) design, this covers:

• AR—You design for digital units to manifest within real-world perception, occasionally along restricted interactivity between them, usually through smartphones. Instances encompass Apple’s ARKit and Android’s ARCore (developer kits), the Pokémon Go game.

• VR—You design immersive experiences that withdraw users from the concrete environment, usually through headset utilities. Instances encompass PSVR for gaming, Oculus or Google Cardboard, allowing users to navigate, e.g., Stonehenge using headset-mounted smartphones.
• MR—You design for blending AR and VR elements so digital objects may engage with the concrete environment; so, you design units that are rooted in actual reality. Instances encompass Magic Leap or HoloLens, that users could apply, e.g., to study more closely ways to repair objects.

Partially due to the minor overlaps between interactivity, labels occasionally utilize AR interchangeably with MR.

The augmented reality stays fashionable—regardless of the point that the original sense of AR design is overlaying digital elements upon real-world views: e.g., GPS filters/overlays upon smartphone screens so users could derive directions from street views.

So, digital elements are just superimposed over real-world perception, not rooted directly in them: The computer-generated visuals cannot engage with the actual displays’ users see—unlike in MR.

The HoloLens is MR, for example, as it understands the extension in a room and blends digital objects with the user’s concrete world.

Top Augmented Reality (AR) Service Providers in Singapore

AR’s Growing Appeal and Potential

AR designers gained huge advances within the 2010s—a decade filled with precious AR learning and instances whereas the compulsory sensors grow cost-friendly.

Pokémon GO is special, a GPS-oriented app that “inserts” Pokémon characters within users’ reality so users may see and capture these on mobile screens.

Google’s AR stickers are more important instances; users drop realistic images upon their photo captures.

Users find AR incredibly attractive for its fun factor. However, AR’s conventional capacity seems guaranteed spanning a large spectrum of applications, encompassing education within museums.

Using AR applications, you may draw experiences near to users within their independent spaces via designs that are better at engagement, customized and—naturally—fun.

“Augmented reality is going to change everything.”

— Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO

Augmented reality vs mixed reality or virtual reality

Microsoft drew the phrase ‘mixed reality’ (MR) more into public attention upon their release of HoloLens.

Some speculate it could possibly be to brand their technology as something novel and exclusive.

Microsoft reports it was employed to simplify the VR/AR spectrum. Both ways, the novel phrase could have created more chaos than worth the minor editing.

How does AR work?

Augmented reality functions in connection to headsets and/or digital devices inclusive of tablets, smartphones or even PCs.

The instruments independently encapsulate software, sensors or digital projectors that activate digital projections upon physical objects.

AR could be crafted or experienced in multiple distinct manifestations.

For instance, Google Glass projects 2D images upon transparent visors, whereas Microsoft’s HoloLens weaves 3D constructs upon the environment surrounding you.

Apps inclusive of Blippar, Zappar or Aurasma let cost-friendly (rather than cost-exempt) AR content crafting for minor enterprises, training or many more applications, and naturally, eventually, AR functions inside current smartphone apps or games, inclusive of Snapchat and Pokémon Go.

The AR facility engages a camera using “scanning mode”.

To employ certain AR creation apps like Blippar, you must directly point the scanning camera at any object inside the room to generate a database of shapes or corners.

Upon the camera’s detection of a ‘triggering’ object within the database, a digital object projection will display in the place of the directed object.

The Future of Augmented Reality in Singapore

Prospective tourists could see 3D models of Singapore icons like the Merlion from personal living rooms, as part of augmented reality (AR) push by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB).

The tourism board is building a reserve of such content that businesses in the industry could utilize to market Singapore as a tourist spot and improve their on-site experience, Mr Poh Chi Chuan, STB’s acting chief technology officer told The Straits Times in an interview on Wednesday (Oct 21).

This will assist local businesses to provide a better end-to-end experience for visitors, which will be key in the future of travel as consumers become more selective in their destination choices, Mr Poh said.

Businesses can, for example, use the technology to give potential visitors a preview of their offerings, down to the layout of a hotel room.

Augmented reality can also be used to overlay information or add interactive elements at an attraction.

While the technology is not new, it is a useful and accessible tool to engage consumers as global travel restrictions remain in place, Mr Poh said.

For attractions, it can also add new experiences and content at a lower cost than building a new exhibit, he added.

“I think companies that can use AR will have an edge when travel resumes.”