AR vs VR: Who Is Ruling The Metaverse?
The fight for a piece of the metaverse was highlighted as a factor for Microsoft’s $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, also renamed his social networking company, Meta in late 2021. All the big companies are talking about the “metaverse” with Walmart already making its moves into the virtual circle.
The Metaverse is the technological future, and it will revolutionize society during the next ten years. Hardcore gamers and sociable teenagers, on the other hand, are the only folks who will use VR headgear for hours each day. The divide arises from the fact that the term “metaverse” signifies different things to different people, causing market misunderstanding.
The metaverse has no official definition, however, Meta characterizes it as “a collection of virtual environments where you can create and explore with others who aren’t in the same physical space as you.” You’ll be able to socialize with your friends, work, play, learn, shop, and create”.
Everyone has watched the movie “Ready Player One”. That means deep down we all have an idea of how this is going to play out. Considering how virgin the space is, no one’s has it figured out. Even the big companies and people who are investing so much are not sure about the technology that would be deployed here.
The New Realities!
Virtual reality has grown as an innovation that can deliver any kind of reality a person seeks. With VR gadgets, anyone can be anything and anywhere.
To explore the metaverse, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality technologies must be deployed. As we discuss two distinct concepts that the metaverse is strongly linked to, we’ll also consider the varying levels of acceptability and radically different societal implications.
The main difference between the two terms is that virtual items can be embedded in the actual human environment using augmented reality technology like the photo below.
VR on the other hand involves immersing oneself in a 3D virtual environment using 3D computer modeling, one of the most fascinating styles of graphic design.
Augmented reality, or AR, is a technologically augmented version of the real world that is created through the use of digital visual elements, music, or other sensory stimulation.
Virtual Worlds
Virtual Reality, or VR, is a virtual environment that can be explored in 360 degrees using computer technology. In contrast to traditional interfaces, virtual reality immerses the user in the virtual world.
This is an important technology with the move for the metaverse and digital existence.
The industry has grown to have digital real estates, buildings and museums as well.
In the future, VR will create jobs that people will operate with a VR gadget to their face. What a world that would be.
My Personal Perspective
While everyone has their opinion on what technology they think would beat the other. This is my opinion.
The Virtual Metaverse (avatar-based virtual reality environments) will become more popular, but only for a while. On the other side, the Augmented Metaverse (the merging of real and virtual worlds into a single immersive and unified reality) will affect everyone on the planet and will drastically alter civilization. I believe the Augmented Metaverse will be the technology of the future.
The entire VR experience could turn miserable almost immediately because it will be confined and claustrophobic to have a scuba mask on an individual’s face for an extended period. And, here’s the thing: Even when 3D glasses (that is, shuttering glasses for viewing 3D on flat monitors) is used, the confining experience does not go away. This is because the individual still has to keep his gaze forward as if wearing blinders to the real world. That can make just about anyone want to pull the blinders off and allow the power of virtual reality to be integrated into the real physical surroundings.
The issue with virtual reality is that it taps into a natural human sense of being cut off from one’s surroundings. That is, in the end, the true impediment to entirely virtual worlds being commonplace in our lives. It’s just not a natural experience.
https://twitter.com/magdalenakala/status/1355677545056923652?s=20
As a result, when the metaverse is widely embraced, it will be an augmented reality accessible through see-through lenses. Even if the virtual reality gear will improve the precision to photorealistic levels, this will remain the case. But, once again, precision will not be the driving force behind widespread adoption. Instead, the technology that provides the most natural experience to the human perceptual system will be adopted. Integrating digital content directly into our physical surroundings is the most natural approach to expose it to human beings.
All sensory signals (sight, sound, touch, and motion) are coordinated in your brain to feed a single mental model of the world. This can be accomplished with relatively low precision in augmented reality, as long as virtual elements are convincingly spatially and temporally registered to your surroundings.
However, establishing a unified sensory picture of the environment in virtual reality is far more difficult. This may appear surprising given how much easier it is for VR technology to generate high-precision graphics. That, however, is not the issue. Your body is the issue. Your body will be sitting or standing stationary unless you are employing complex and impractical hardware, but most virtual experiences include mobility. Because of this discrepancy, your brain is forced to create and maintain two unique models of your environment: one for your real surroundings and one for the virtual world you see via your headset.
https://twitter.com/InteractioApp/status/1484209184501637125?s=20
Augmented reality will not only overshadow virtual reality as our primary gateway to the metaverse, but it will also replace the current ecosystem of phones and desktops as our primary interface to digital content. After all, walking down the street with your neck bent, staring at a phone in your hand is not the most natural way to present content to the human perceptual system. Augmented reality is, which is why I believe that within ten years, AR hardware and software will become the dominant platform, overshadowing phones and desktops in our lives.
After all, this is just my opinion. Yours matters too!
