Intelligent Realities For Workers Using Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Beyond
Figure 2: Devices on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum 5
The quadrants represent different use cases
and approaches:
Lower left: smart phone and tablet
AR. Smart phones and tablets are so
pervasive that the incremental
hardware cost is often zero. But they
are not heads-up and hands-free.
Lower right: flat screen virtual worlds
(or VR for the flat screen). This
includes virtual worlds on flat
screens, tiled displays and Computer
Assisted
Virtual
Environments
(CAVEs).
Upper right: virtual reality for HMDs.
The market supports different VR
devices with different resolution,
field-of-view, and processing power.
Tethered HMDs connected to
powerful PCs, including HMDS from
Oculus™, HTC™, Lenovo™ and
PiMax™, are the most capable. Less
capable but also less expensive and
sometimes more convenient are
smart phone approaches such as
Google® Cardboard™ and Samsung ®
Gear VR™.
Upper left: AR HMDs. With AR, the
design fragmentation is the greatest.
There are three basic design
categories:
Stereoscopic headsets. Larger
and compatible with prescription
glasses. Microsoft ® HoloLens™ is
a headset. Mira Prism™ is a
headset
that
utilizes
a
smartphone.
Stereoscopic smart glasses.
Smaller but users may need to
procure prescription lenses for
5
Attribution for embedded images, starting clockwise from upper left: Vuzix, Microsoft Sweden, Nan Palmero, Google, Jean-
Pierre Dalbéra, Dave Pape, Wikimedia user Dontworry, EVG photos, pixabay.com
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March 2019