Virtual reality offers you a computer-generated virtual environment, which you can interact with and Augmented Reality, on the other hand, superimposes computer-generated image over the real world. While the two technologies each have their own draws, they are far from the technology envisioned in movies like Iron Man. In the Marvel superhero flick, Robert Downey Jr. gets the best of both worlds of VR and AR, whereby he was able to interact with the VR overlaid in a real world, doing stuff like zoom, rotate, open files and such. What we saw was a VR/AR hybrid, which in real life, is under development by a startup called Magic Leap Studios.
The Florida-based tech company pitches what it calls Cinematic Reality that sort of fuses VR and AR to create an immersive environment where you can interact at the same time. Yup. It is Tony Stark’s technology-turn-reality, but with the aid of a headset. Be patience; mankind is just getting there. Anywho, with Magic Leap ‘Cinematic Reality’, it uses a technology called ‘Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal’, that supposed to projects the images onto your retina, thereby creating an illusion the CG objects are actually there in your real environment.
This is a completely new tech, as opposed to the current implementation of projecting images on the glasses, or in the case of a VR headset, on a display. Apart from letting you watch movies and wiping out evil robots that came bashing into your home, Cinematic Reality can also let you check email, surf the Internet, manage your files, and whatever you do on a smartphone or PC.
So when will this fabulous tech arrive? No idea, but as far as fruition, we are hopeful and there’s no reason for us not to feel so, as Magic Leap’s pitch has since wooed investors from a Google-lead consortium that brings the funding thus far to over $540 million. And that’s not the end as far as money is concerned. Words are, they are courting after Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba too. Anyways, we are thrilled by the prospect of the hybrid AR/VR and how it is likely to blow all other competitions out of the water, in a manner of speaking. Now the question that remains is, “when?” I sure hope it is not going to be 2020…
