Immersive technology

[edit] What is immersive technology?

The UK Digital Catapult supported by Innovate UK describe immersive technology as technology that transforms the digital experience by 'bringing together the virtual with users’ sight, sound and event touch. Ranging from virtual reality and augmented reality to haptics, immersive technologies are new ways of creating, displaying and interacting with applications, content and experiences.' it goes on to say ' Immersive technologies allow a person to feel part of an artificial, simulated environment – for example, immersive theatre requires the audience to interact with the set, props and actors, while an immersive air control dashboard may allow the operator to see and interact with real-time monitoring data.'

The three immersive technologes; Virtual reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR) and haptic technologies are decribed here:

[edit] Virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) completely replaces a user’s surroundings with a digital environment using a head-mounted display (HMD) with two near-eye displays, one for each eye. This is a closed and fully immersive 3D environment. VR lends itself to both industrial applications and creative experiences with new modes of storytelling. Perhaps the most widely known immersive technology, virtual reality has been around since the 1990s but it’s only in the past decade that VR has become an increasingly large part of our professional and private lives, running a spectrum of use cases from employee training to creative outstanding immersive entertainment experiences.

[edit] Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) creates an immersive experience for users by blending the real with the virtual. Utilising computer vision and machine learning algorithms the device can understand the ‘real world’ in both a spatial and semantic sense. AR seamlessly blends the digital and physical worlds by allowing a user to overlay digital objects in a physical space.

[edit] Haptics

Haptic technologies are commonly referred to as ‘3D touch’ or ‘kinaesthetic interaction’. Unlike other immersive technologies, haptics uses tactile feedback including pressure, vibrations, and movements to enable the user to “feel” whilst in a virtual environment, increasing the levels of interaction to cover multiple senses. Haptic tech is likely to be one of the main ways for users to interact with applications and content in future computing paradigms, whether that’s spatial computing or in the “metaverse”.

This article appears on the UK innovate Digital Catapult site as 'Everything you need to know about immersive technology' dated april 2024.

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