From The Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw: Augmented reality is set to be one of the big themes of January’s Consumer Electronics Show as investment pours into start-ups working on new headsets and other systems that throw digital “holograms” on top of the real world.
The ability to visualise and manipulate 3D images as though they were real objects, tell immersive stories and communicate in new ways is attracting entrepreneurs and some of largest technology companies to AR, also known as “mixed reality”.
Tim Cook, Apple chief executive, has said AR would become an “everyday” experience for consumers. Apple has been experimenting with headset prototypes in its labs over the past year, people familiar with the situation have told the Financial Times, after accelerating its recruitment in related technologies such as optics and computer vision.
Several companies are planning to show their latest headsets at CES, the gadget industry show in Las Vegas, taking advantage of the latest advances in image processing and lower energy consumption from chipmakers such as Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia. Others will show off AR cameras embedded into smartphones, enabling a more sophisticated take on apps such as Pokémon Go.
Many in Silicon Valley believe that devices along the lines of Microsoft’s $3,000 HoloLens head-worn computer or start-up Magic Leap’s promised goggles will one day surpass smartphones as the dominant way people interact with computers. Advocates argue they could be a more natural way of using technology than staring down at a tiny screen.
“AR is fundamentally a new technology that will enable the next generation of computing,” says Radu Rusu, chief executive of Fyusion, a software start-up focused on AR. “It’s the next step after your phone.”
But even among executives and entrepreneurs within this emerging industry, there are wildly divergent opinions about when AR will be ready for broad scale consumer adoption.