I never understood the difference between these two terms until recently when I was talking to my vendor. I was just mixing these words in my converstation with him, but then he pointed me saying that "You need to be clear on what you are asking for since both of them are two different situation." I was little surprise to hear that since I always thought they were the same. Then i shamelessly asked him with fear and a tone of embarassment "Do you mind telling me on what is the difference between them as I am completely new to this". The guy chuckled and said "Well it is not easy for me to explain in conversation, let me send you a link which can make it clear." I could not sleep that night waiting for his email with links unitl 11 pm when i saw the link. We will come back to that later in the blog.

Few days back, I saw one of my P&G colleague post in FB sharing pokeman GO post which has taken over the world like anything and that too with adults and not kids. Even people who do not have access to pokeman GO are creating fake apple ID profile with address in US/UK/Australia just to play the game. It is the one of the first commerically available Augmented Reality game. I also got inspired by that but was too lazy to install it on my iPhone. So i took Mona's Nexus 5 and installed the pokeman GO APK from a website to see what exactly is Pokeman GO and why the whole world is going crazy about it. and what is this craze of sudden AR/VR thing. Suddenly so many ads in mall showing catch your own Pokeman and at same time mobile retail stores selling Oculus rift and Samsung Gear VR. This was driving me crazy to play the game. And then when I started playing, it became addiction where you were suppose to catch pokeman in real world using your mobile camera. Still till this time, I did not differentiate between AR and VR. And FB post which I forgot about while writing mentioned "Is it Augmented Reality or Augmented Virtuality" and I felt that she is correct since it is still virtual. We will get back to that statement again

THE REVEALATION

Coming back to the email which I was eagerly waiting for came with 4-5 links in them. And those links really gave me good deep insight on what exactly is Augmented Reality and what is Virtual Reality. So for those people like me it is time to deep dive into the reality. 

What is VR ? Virtual Reality is something where you go into artificial world or you are part of digital world. So when you wear those VR glasses, you are basically transferring your senses (not all though, but see, hear atleast) into their world which is digital world created by someone like us.

What is AR ? Also called mixed reality, is where the digital forms are presented into real world. Remember the famous Ben Affleck movie "Paycheck" where the beautiful red dress girl is shown in holographics or even in Steven Spielberg "Avtaar" where the complete terrain/place of the blue creatures were shown in the humans office. That is now actually augmented reality. We still have to wear special glasses like Microsoft Hololens to see them. Pokeman GO is also somewhat augmented reality since pokeman are part of our real world but using our camera. Microsoft Hololens is something that came out in the market recently and still to be commercially available. It is available fo developers @ 3,000 USD that too if you are lucky.

Hopefully these links will give you better understanding.

Augemented Reality Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OHE_dGfQss

Virtual Reality Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SshRQEfXho

Lastly, out of curiosity I asked the guy are we the first company who is enquiring about AR. He started laughing, gave a pause and said it is a race out there right now on which company comes out with AR application first on full scale. It is still a journey and will require some time for AR to replace VR since there are few limitations like no interaction possible in AR as compared to VR along with availability of Microsoft Hololens commercially. Right now AR is used by companies for demo of their product to clients

Hope you will enjoy reading this article. I am sure I will try to use AR for my future project, but for my current project, VR will be the way I will be going.