Hard to believe it’s already 2016, and just like that another year and another CES has come and gone. Every year at CES, experts and attendees leave the show stating, “This is the year of…(fill in the blank).” You know the drill. Usually it’s the year of thinner televisions or larger mobile devices. This year, however, the show—perhaps best known for its gadgets—became a show about applications. And if we’re talking applications, this year that application was AR and VR, more widely known as Augmented and Virtual Reality. In fact, for the first time CES dedicated more than 5000 Square Feet of floor space to AR and VR, creating a dedicated Augmented Reality zone at the annual conference.
Sure we’ve heard rumblings about the new Oculus Rift, and VR products from HTC and Samsung, but from a consumer’s perspective, AR and VR have historically been geared towards hobbyists, and a few niche industrial applications. For the rest of us? Prior to this year’s CES, Virtual Reality was the stuff of movies—something we thought might rear its head sometime in the next 20 years or so…certainly not in 2016. Well, we were wrong. In fact, Goldman Sachs believes by 2025 the AR/VR market will reach 80 million dollars!
If you set foot within the Las Vegas Contention center for this year’s CES show or even if you just followed along online, everywhere you turned you were hearing about the new AR and VR applications for both industry and personal entertainment. Its influence was everywhere and the excitement was palpable. Attendees lined up for hours in some cases just to experience, if only for a few short minutes, what the future of AR and VR may mean to them.
With all of this in mind, the applications are endless and even though Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are at the center of the discussion, there are vastly different applications for the two technologies. So which stood out the most at this year’s show? For me, it comes down to two things. The “Now” and the “Coming Soon.” Sure, as technology advances and continues to evolve, it’s no exaggeration to say “the best is yet to come” for VR, but even today there are some very exciting applications for AR and VR that are becoming real game changers in the marketplace.
The Now: In the augmented reality category there are several great industrial applications that have emerged in the past couple of years, but none may be a bigger driver of the growth of AR than what’s happening in the auto industry. BMW Mini recently launched a pair of glasses that allow drivers to enhance their driving experience inside and out of the automobile. With a “look through” approach to AR, it allows the driver to safely gather data and interact with the environment without having to every take their eyes off of the road.
For Virtual Reality there is no application today that is bigger than gaming. The ability to immerse yourself inside your favorite games is going to lead to a spike in sales of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, all the while creating a massive new opportunity for brands to incorporate product placement into the immersive experiences of gamers everywhere.
Coming Soon: With the rapid emergence of 3D and 360 degree cameras the ability to create content for augmented and virtual reality is going to increase at breakneck speed. In the near future I see two major impacts that VR and AR will make on everyday experiences. First, the rapid increase in data intelligence has driven the semantic web to create digital experiences during real world activities. The fascinating thing about the impact of the semantic layer is that it will operate based not on our actions but on a subliminal level using object recognition and intent extracted from data to, for instance, make 3D imagery appear from a projector embedded inside of a device. Other examples of this include technology that acts to incorporate us into augmented experiences, much like Dassault Systémes is doing with the HTC VR headset and Microsoft Kinect.
We have reached an age where the very idea of our lives merging with and being immersed in AR and VR technology is starting to feel excitingly attainable. It doesn’t feel “science fiction’y” anymore. And those special AR and VR zones at this year’s CES are the proof. Although we may feel that this is still a new set of tools, soon these amazing technologies will just become part of the backdrop of our lives, much like telephones, TVs, computers and smartphones and other mobile devices have done. Who knows, perhaps in a few years CES will mean nothing more than strapping on our VR headsets and taking a stroll down the show floor, exploring a world created by technology and the boundless potential of the human data center.
