Augmented Reality in Entertainment

Augmented reality has split into two areas in entertainment: One is the use of headsets for gaming and the other is the use of phone cameras to seemingly distort reality. Examples of these involve Microsoft’s HoloLens, a product that you wear on your head and look through that displays information and games with a very sci-fi feel. The release of Niantic Labs’ Pokémon Go, a mobile game that lets you see and capture Pokémon in the real world, demonstrated AR’s potential to be adopted by mainstream culture.

Many tech news sources call Microsoft’s HoloLens “the future of computing.” It works by displaying “holograms” onto its screens and by using cameras and microphones to take inputs from the user. Interacting with the holograms is fairly simple with voice commands and gesture controls. It can put a wireframe mesh around real world objects so a person can clearly see what is real and what is not. Though the HoloLens is an impressive piece of hardware, it’s nothing without the development of applications for it. Demos of the HoloLens featured a popular game known as Minecraft, a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang. The creative aspects of Minecraft partnered with the HoloLens spark excitement among a large portion of consumers. In addition, several applications are using graphical overlays that can inform users about historical locations, explore tourist destinations, and play video games. A recently popular game featuring AR technology is Pokémon Go. Pokémon Go is a free-to-play, location-based augmented reality game developed by Niantic. In the game, players utilize a mobile device's GPS and camera to locate, capture, and train Pokémon who appear on the screen as if they were in the same location as the user. The game is a huge step in the development of applications featuring augmented technology. The technology itself has the potential to spark creative ways to go about education and entertainment. In time, AR applications will be prominent among consumers.