Page 6 - 2015 PIM Buyers Guide .pdf

Augmented Reality
on the Cusp of Significant Increase in Adoption

Excerpts from an article in The Magazine, Jan 2015
Julie Shaffer, Vice President, Digital Strategies Printing Industries of America

Augmented Reality (AR) is one of those disruptive While VR may prove to be the ultimate human life changer
in the future, for the next several years, AR has much more
technologies that has been poised to take off for longer than general business potential, including print and publishing.
the entire lifecycle of other technologies heralded to become
“the next big thing” (anyone remember the LaserDisc?). But in Types of Augmented Reality
2015, AR really is on the road to mainstream use, and it is one
technology that may prove to be very important to the future There are different types of augmented reality technology
of print, especially print publishing and marketing services. companies and applications, including display hardware
and software. On the display side, handheld mobile devices
AR v. VR are the most common today, with 854 million smartphones
having AR technology enabled in them. It is predicted that
Augmented reality is distinct from its more high profile 2.5 billion AR apps will be downloaded by 2017 and that by
cousin, Virtual Reality (VR), in a couple of ways. Virtual reality 2020, more than 100 million automobiles will be AR-enabled.
is intended to be entirely immersive, plunging the user into

Photo credit: IKEA Triggering the
Experience
a virtual world that makes it difficult to distinguish from the
real world. Augmented reality, on the other hand, blends the AR technology works with
real world and virtual content. Often AR involves layering different types of triggers,
a 3D graphic over top of a view of the real world as seen which can be a marker or
through a video device. Think of the virtual lines shown on pattern, an outline, image,
the field during a televised football or soccer game and you or surface recognition or a
get the idea of how AR works. GPS location trigger. The
applications are as wide
open as the imagination.
In conjunction with a GPS,
AR apps can provide an
enhanced view of the
world, showing bus stops
and business locations when viewing a street through a
smartphone camera. Consider being able to show what an
empty room could look like furnished (IKEA’s 2012 and 2013
catalogs offered a simplified version of this concept) or what
a building would look like in a specific location before it’s
built.

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