Following Geovector’s selection as a Cool Vendor in 2006, we’re starting to see other early commercialization of augmented reality capabilities using cell phones, such as Mobilizy’s Wikitude and Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera.
We’re also seeing a growing body of well-informed discussion and debate around types of augmented reality and their relative maturity. In Augmented Vision and the Decade of Ubiquity, Robert Rice separates out four levels of AR, distinguishing the current batch of animation-enhanced video feedbacksystems (eg from Total Immersion) from those like Mobilitzy’s Wikitude that stay closer to the original vision of using knowledge of the user’s location and other context to superimpose relevant information. In the Augmented Reality Hype Cycle, Maarten of SPRXMobile positions the four styles and other additions on a hype cycle chart, triggering some interesting debate about capabilities such as dumb vs smart augmentation (ie does the system deliver a static piece of information linked to an object or place, or does it use context to deliver dynamic links).
This level of discourse, along with the beginnings of the commercial services, indicates that the topic is climbing higher toward the Peak of Inflated Expectations. We’ll shortly be updating the hype cycle entry for augmented reality for this summer’s Hype Cycle Special Report and we’ll move it along accordingly.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Ori Inbar // May 30, 2009 at 12:37 am
If public awareness has any correlation with the hype cycle stage, I would argue we are barely entering the “technology trigger” stage. Ask 100 random passerbys on the street and you will find less than <1% familiarity with AR. For most people it still sounds like science fiction. They don’t know what they don’t know. Somebody, tell them about it.
2 Mephysto // May 30, 2009 at 6:51 am
That’s a double edged sword, Ori. On one side we’ll get funds to experiment with cool usefull AR. But companies will also want to market the novelty-marker-AR to make original campaigns.
I sure hope we get to the “Trough of disillusionment” fast, so we can start thinking of actual usefull applications.