{"id":340326,"date":"2017-05-08T13:23:33","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T05:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1484944"},"modified":"2017-05-08T13:23:33","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T05:23:33","slug":"will-smartphone-ar-stunt-virtual-realitys-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/will-smartphone-ar-stunt-virtual-realitys-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Will smartphone AR stunt virtual reality\u2019s growth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cIt\u2019s a VR play. That\u2019s the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters \u2018V\u2019 and \u2018R\u2019, and VC\u2019s would hurl bricks of cash at them.\u00a0By the time they find out it\u2019s vaporware, it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

T.J. Miller\u2019s Erlich Bachman from\u00a0HBO\u2019s Silicon Valley isn\u2019t necessarily known for\u00a0his business prowess but his\u00a0assertion that virtual reality is a hotbed of hype right now in Silicon Valley is right, the real question is where it goes from here.<\/p>\n

Virtual reality can and will continue to find a hold with gamers that don\u2019t mind paying a premium, but recent developments surrounding smartphone augmented\u00a0reality may make it more difficult for VR-makers to find traction amongst more casual consumers.<\/p>\n

The augmented reality platforms shown off by Facebook with its\u00a0Camera Effects<\/a>\u00a0and Snap with its\u00a0World Lenses<\/a> show off a physical world that can be shifted and changed in front of our eyes. Right now this is done in pretty trivial ways surrounding content creation, yet\u00a0there are so many places that this can go based on what we currently know about how the internet interfaces with the physical world.<\/p>\n

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Someday you\u2019ll be wearing something that will allow you to observe this augmented world at all times, but for the time being,\u00a0the smartphone does a great\u00a0job of capturing more situational use cases that fit in with mobile\u2019s broader goal of delivering more localized, context-aware experiences.<\/p>\n

The issue\u00a0is that some of these situational, experiential moments\u00a0were what mobile virtual reality was allegedly going to help us discover. VR was going to be the more imminent, consumer-accessible\u00a0technology that\u00a0pre-empted many of the headset AR\u00a0use cases\u00a0still a\u00a0decade or so out, but the \u201cmagic window\u201d into the world that you get when you hold your camera-equipped smartphone into the air may be all we really need until Magic Leap or Microsoft\u00a0or Apple create the next device we all desperately need.<\/p>\n

Gaming and VR\u00a0video apps are definitely interesting, but may not be enough to drive sales of smartphone-based headsets like the Gear VR or Daydream View headsets.<\/p>\n

Even as device manufacturers nail positional tracking on mobile, the use cases will deliver just as much to smartphone AR as they do to mobile VR.\u00a0Google is building next-gen depth-sensing cameras into handsets through its Tango platform while Apple reportedly has hundreds working on its own solution for phone-based AR.<\/p>\n

Pulling a VR headset out of your backpack to check out a 3D model makes a lot less sense when you can just hold your phone up in the air and view something mapped onto a nearby tabletop<\/p>\n

Putting on a VR headset or opening an\u00a0AR app then\u00a0raising your hand are ultimately both deliberate\u00a0choices, with one of those requiring a lot more effort (and a lot less social awareness) than the other. Some non-gaming use cases like social telepresence, data visualization, e-commerce, and employee training will undoubtedly\u00a0have more-accessible\u00a0solutions on smartphone AR while other specialized verticals\u00a0like medical therapy and CAD visualization aren\u2019t meant for\u00a0consumers anyway.<\/p>\n

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Users high-five each other in the social app, AltspaceVR<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The fidelity of virtual reality experiences will always be superior to what your smartphone can offer and will\u00a0allow deeper\u00a0levels of feeling immersed in whatever you\u2019re doing.\u00a0The world this matters most for is the one a few can kicks down the road where users are actually entering digital worlds where they are living through experiences in a supplementary way.\u00a0Virtual reality is a tool enabling lifelike experiences, and that\u2019s something that the gaming industry is better suited to carry out than most.<\/p>\n

Smartphone-based augmented reality is going to pick up steam in a major way over the next couple years as the largest tech companies on the planet throw their full weight behind it. While virtual reality is sure to continue growing, the VR \u201ckiller apps\u201d that many hoped would become evident soon may end up popping up on the camera-enabled smartphones that billions already have in their pockets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" “It’s a VR play. That’s the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters ‘V’ and ‘R’, and VC’s would hurl bricks of cash at them.\u00a0By the time they find out it’s vaporware, it’s too late.”
\nT.J. Miller’s Erlich Bachman… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-340326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}