While for many years some thought that augmented reality was dead, not necessarily finding its audience or the ability to expand into society as a whole, the current period is quite different. With the arrival of the metaverse, here is that the AR regains its letters of nobility and becomes now essential.
Whether it’s reimagining the way we shop, fueling the growth of the designer economy, or moving us closer to the limits of the metaverse, today’s mobile AR ecosystem is laying the groundwork for new ones. modes of interaction with the world. Between the wills of web giants like Facebook and Twitter, and the creation of completely augmented universes like Pokémon GO, what can AR bring to the metaverse? Will we always be talking about a virtual world or will we succeed in recreating the real world? In this article, we go through the key principles of AR in the metaverse, the opportunity to also represent OVR, a pioneer in the field.
Warning : This article is brought to you by the company OVR. Crypto investments are risky by nature, do your own research and invest only within the limits of your financial capacity. This article does not constitute an investment invitation.
A look back at the history of augmented reality
In a 2016 New Yorker article, tech writer Om Malik explained: “ Augmented Reality is the “boy who cried wolf” of the post-internet world: it has long been promised, but has rarely been delivered satisfactorily. He then explored the possible implications of Pokémon Go from Niantic Labs, which had just been deployed in July 2016. It’s unlikely that Malik could have predicted that the AR mobile game would become Lightning in a Bottle, attracting some 232 million users.
Facebook (Meta) may be planning to create an immersive digital matrix otherwise known as a metaverse, but Niantic CEO John Hanke tells us what it plans to do is take reality and improve it. .
Half a decade later, Pokémon Go seems to be a half-forgotten dream, which, some argue, confirms Malik’s initial assessment, who viewed AR as overrated, but ultimately unsatisfactory. Today’s numbers, however, tell a different story. The global AR market is expected to reach worth more than $ 340 billion in 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 43.8% between that year and 2028.
Mobile AR has already become a key part of our daily life. There are the camera filters of Snapchat and Instagram for example, and then there are the apps whose interfaces offer a digitized snapshot of real infrastructure and geographies, from Google Maps to Uber.
Even though AR has already quietly inserted itself into the fabric of our lives, many experts argue that today’s technological, sociological and economic landscape offers perhaps more opportunities for innovation in mobile AR than ever before, and it is notably driven by the stormy arrival of metaverse, this new world between real and virtual which is defining the contours of Web3, the next generation Internet.
There might be a detail that escapes you, but do you really know the difference between AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality)? Indeed, it is a crucial question, at the heart of the debates on the vision that we want to give to the world of tomorrow. Both components of what are called Immersive Tech (immersive technologies), AR and VR have some differences. This is either the fact of immersing the user in a virtual environment (VR), or of making virtual elements appear in the user’s real environment (AR).
For example, Facebook is now Meta in the process of designing a hand in the form of a haptic glove in order to be able, tomorrow, to touch virtual objects in the metaverse experience.
The metaverse, this new world between real and digital
The more the giants invest in this new universe, the more we realize the almost philosophical debate that takes place before our eyes between the believers of AR and VR. While Meta is developing virtual reality as we have seen, Niantic Labs, on the other hand, believes in AR for the Metaverse. The creator of Pokémon Go even launched an AR mobile app development kit.
Increasingly, experts believe that we are approaching a “metaverse”, where physical reality and digital reality are totally merged and where a unified semi or fully virtual reality takes hold. When we know that the metaverse market is valued at around 800 billion dollars by 2024. ” The real transformation will come when the optical problems of augmented reality headsets are resolved and the notion of a permanent digital overlay of the world becomes a reality. Says Alex Nelson, UX manager for future experiments at the BBC’s research and development arm.
The question that arises is that of knowing who will own the metaverse of augmented reality, in a virtual world superimposed on the real world. It may sound like science fiction, but the ability to present content specific to the location and context of the user is very appealing, both to the audience and to those who are struggling to become the big players in the game. ‘AR. Among the pioneers of AR and what is now called the metaverse, Civilization AR, for example, is an immersive mobile app launched in 2018 that allows users to explore exhibits and interact with famous artifacts up close.
The merging of the physical and digital worlds is a change that could revolutionize marketing and commerce to an unprecedented degree. Indeed, we are resolutely at dawn of Web3, a new community and spatial Web, in which all technologies come to life: 3D, AR, VR, AI and blockchain. Marketing and branding are in the forefront of this paradigm shift and this is what we recently observed with the explosion in the number of partnerships between metaverse or NFT platforms, even gaming and major brands: FortniteX Balenciaga, Louis The Game, Nike X Roblox, Adidas X TheSandbox, Coca-Cola X Decentraland, Kinahan’s in the Metaverse, Gucci X Roblox …
Augmented reality (AR) and metaverse are media technologies that aim to present content in the most natural form possible, by seamlessly integrating simulated sights, sounds and even feelings into our perception of the real world around us. This means that AR, more than any other form of media to date, has the potential to alter our sense of reality, distorting the way we interpret our direct daily experiences. In an augmented world, the mere act of walking down the street will become a savage amalgamation of the physical and the virtual, fused so convincingly that boundaries will disappear in our minds. Our environment will be populated with people, places, objects and activities which do not really exist and which, however, will appear to us to be deeply authentic.
” The future that I am describing is the one that will take over. The one in which IT is there all the time, while blending into the background and helping us do what we have to do. It is ubiquitous computing. In our metaverse, unlike the metaverse in VR, there is this structure that the real world brings. Bytes are related to atoms. And so you have these things that add information to the place you’re in and give you useful functionality. For example, you could put a virtual button in the air to buy a bus ticket, or arrows on the sidewalk that show the way to the subway, or info about the product you’re looking at. It’s the potential that counts. It is in augmented reality that the real metaverse will see the light of day ” John Hanke, CEO of Niantic.
It is faced with this observation and the incredible potential of the metaverse and AR that Niantic Labs is raising $ 300 million to develop the vision of a “real world metaverse” and not just a parallel or virtual world as promoted by Facebook.
OVR, the first augmented reality application propels you into the metaverse
As indicated by his name, OVR (Over the Reality) is an augmented reality platform present across the globe,open sourceand on the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to glimpse a new world and to interconnect with the most popular technologies of the moment, including blockchain and its NFT applications, tokens and cryptocurrencies. But OVR’s ambition does not stop there, it ultimately wishes become the decentralized platform for the space web and the “home” of NFTs.
For this, the firm continues to innovate and has recently launched the creation of the OVR Land Map, the first detailed 3D map of the real world in NFT form. This opens up a huge field of opportunities for creating augmented reality experiences. Beyond OVR Land, OVR is developing a whole bunch of universes capable of creating the Web 3.0 of tomorrow.
Yes Axie Infinity revealed the potential ofplay-to-earn, we can therefore say that OVR competes on the podium ofmap-to-earn allowing users to earn rewards by simply scanning physical locations.
To conclude, we are living in a fantastic period now, because we see before our eyes the outlines of what will be tomorrow the metaverse. The AR will certainly play a predominant place there, the VR also surely… Only the future will tell us if the metaverse will lean more towards a virtual world more real than nature or towards a real world augmented by well thought out virtual.
Karen Jouve
Passionate about new technologies, and blockchain! Uncovering news trends, the latest market developments, and nuggets of the ecosystem, I am happy to help you discover this universe in all its colors.
