AR vs. VR - @ZakW

AR vs. VR - Personal Comparison

Things to Consider (Nazem)

Very interesting article about which one of VR/AR is better:

https://medium.com/cosmoscr/what-is-ar-and-vr-which-is-better-4545d581f1e7

"You cannot say whether pliers are better than hammers, they both are different things having completely different functionalities."

Introduction

Augmented and virtual reality have one big thing in common; they both have the remarkable ability to alter our perception of the world. Where they differ, is the perception of our presence. Virtual reality is able to transpose the user. In other words, bring us some place else. Through closed visors or goggles, VR blocks out the room and puts our presence elsewhere.

Putting a VR headset over your eyes will leave you blind to the current world, but will expand your senses with experiences within. You might even find yourself on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. The immersion is quite dramatic, with some users reporting feelings of movement as they ascend a staircase or ride a rollercoaster within the virtual environment.

Augmented reality however, takes our current reality and adds something to it. It does not move us elsewhere. It simply ​“augments” our current state of presence, often with clear visors. Seen below, Samsung is near ready to introduce its Monitorless AR glasses, which would connect to phones or PCs via WIFI and replace the screen on those devices.

Comparison

I performed my own comparison with Jing's Augmented Reality research project where you can draw with precision in AR and Google's VR Tiltbrush application. Since it is unfair to compare strictly the technologies since first of all, Google built the project, but also there are so many more components to the VR headset, I decided I would try to compare the overall experience. As an AR fanatic, I was surprised how much cooler the Virtual Reality headset was. To my surprise the VR experience was much better from a technical standpoint.

However, while VR is more immersive, AR provides more freedom for the user, and more possibilities for widespread usage because it does not need to be a head-mounted display.

Jing's research pushes for a day where we could use our hands to play with AR objects directly instead of clicking on the smartphone screen. Portalble enables such AR experience by incorporating 3D hand and location tracking. It allows the users to interact with AR objects directly even when they are walking. Currently, they are making the AR objects more responsive to real-life objects. You can read more about it here: https://www.jingts.com/jing-n-research

Conclusion

This shift is what distinguishes AR and VR to me. Obviously VR is a "cooler experience". However, AR is more promising and expandable to the common user. Using it was very simple and intuitive. However, the technology is still not there. Thus, for now, VR is a better experience. But, it is much closer than people might think, and it I believe AR will take off soon enough, especially as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, and other tech giants start to invest more in projects like Jing's.