AR is growing faster than we thought – will AR and VR change our reality?

AR is growing
Image by Sergey Nivens | Bigstockphoto

AR is growing faster than we thought, and we now have compelling numbers that support this. The question is will AR and VR take us to the next level of the internet.

Numbers from the Chinese company SenseTime, one of the first companies banned by Washington because it was peddling facial recognition technology, has announced that daily active users of its AR (augmented reality) product now stand at 100 million (a milestone that Richard Windsor believes to be the moment when you have a chance at the very big time).

AR is growing in different scenarios, of course. It is not just about avatars and shopping. SenseTime is also looking at using AR as part of the drive towards autonomous vehicles.

VR, like AR, is growing too and is now being ‘touted’ as the road to the Metaverse by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, who is rapidly reinventing Facebook as a Metaverse company.

While this still feels mind-bending to many, Richard Windsor believes that it could be the thing that saves Facebook and its unique advantage lies in its Oculus Quest 2 headset.

While VR has been used in many areas for many years, Facebook’s announcement of a trial for its Horizon Workroom app seems like a step-change in its application and ubiquity.

The fact is that remote working is here to stay, in some form. An application that allows remote workers to collaborate via avatars that actually interact does seem more compelling than previous attempts that have all seemed a little, well, boring.

The old adage that people will do what they want to do, not what they need to do, might prove right, again.

AR is still at an experimental stage. We will have to suffer a lot more cute cat’s ears on human profiles before we stop being irritated about it. Things, though, seem to be changing – and fast.

AR is growing fast, VR perhaps faster (which is a subset still under discussion), and the changes that these ‘new’ or newly accessible technologies will make are becoming clearer. The internet that we use every day is becoming old and corrupt, and even the people that ‘invented’ it are now trying hard to change it.

Whether the Metaverse ends up being what Mark Zuckerberg imagines or something different, the reality is that AR and VR are here and becoming mainstream for both work and play.

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