Introduction
Augmented Reality (AR) overlays images of the real world with computer generated (CG) images in real-time. The main clue is that the CG-images can fit into the real scene with correct perspective, where the point of view will follow the person looking at the virtual objects. It is just like the typical postproduction you get in all Hollywood movies, where hundreds of artists insert monsters, UFOs, hurricanes or just simple explosions or simple still backgrounds into the shot material - to save time and money or to create dreamlike worlds, that couldn’t be produced otherwise… Now there is one big difference to Augmented Reality: movie productions have days, weeks or month for a single frame to create and make it look real… Augmented Reality only has a split-second to convince the viewer that there is something he or she can believe is there, although it is not! Then of course, the viewer can move around the real-time fake freely and even interact with it. Something movies will never offer.
Media Examples
This first example shows an overlaid image: the post was filmed with a video camera and the captured images were used to generate the position where the virtual box should appear. The camera can move at free will and the box will always appear on the post. This is the hello world of augmented reality…
Using a head mounted display (HMD) you can move around freely, seeing the real world plus the overlaid computer images.
A report in Beyond Tomorrow on Augmented Reality at HITLab, Christchurch, New Zealand.