Medigy: Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are technologies that connect the digital and physical worlds. They enable you to visually absorb information and content in the same way that you do the rest of the world. AR significantly expands the ways our devices can assist us in daily activities such as searching for information, shopping, and expressing ourselves. Virtual reality allows you to experience what it’s like to be anywhere, from the front row of a concert to distant planets in space.

Because almost anyone with a smartphone can access augmented reality, it is more effective as a branding and gaming tool than VR. By projecting virtual pictures and characters through a phone’s camera or video viewer, AR transforms the mundane, physical world into a colorful, visual one. Augmented reality is simply enhancing the user’s real-world experience.

Virtual reality takes these elements to the next level by creating an entirely computer-generated simulation of a different world. Using special equipment such as computers, sensors, headsets, and gloves, these immersive simulations can create almost any visual or location imaginable for the player. The distinctions between VR and AR are based on the equipment required and the experience itself:

• AR uses a real-world setting, whereas VR is entirely virtual.

• AR users have control over their physical presence in the world, whereas VR users are controlled by the system.

• While VR requires a headset device, AR can be accessed using a smartphone.

• AR improves both the virtual and real worlds, whereas VR only improves a fictional reality.