What is Immersive Technology?

Rumman Ansari Software Engineer 2023-02-08 5899 Share

☰ Table of Contents

Table of Content:

What is Immersive Technology

Any technology that enables digital experience in the realm of the physical world is Immersive Technology.

The focus of Immersive Technology is to combine a virtual, computer-generated world with the physical world such that it forms a perception to the human user of experiencing both the worlds at the same time.

Immersive Technology

The word Immersive indicates a maturing of technology such that user’s are immersed into the digital perceptions.

Digital Technology engaging human perception is not new. Human engagement with electronic devices TV, Computers, Mobiles, Theatre, 3D movies, etc. have all been working on the 5 basic senses to create a perception of the real world, delivered by images and video’s.

The earliest form of creating a completely new world of simulations was best known by NASA’s flight simulator, in which the user gets a perception of actually flying within a simulator.

Today, the technology has reached consumer’s in the form of Virtual Reality, in which the virtual world can be created by anyone, and can be delivered to general-purpose hardware such as Head Mounted Devices.

Flavors of Immersive Technology

Immersive Technologies come in 3 flavors:

Virtual Reality (VR) - Head Mounted Devices (HMD) Completely cut off from real world and presents simulated world that is the only perception of the world. User interactions (Gestures, Speech, Movement) cause a reaction within the virtual world.
Augmented Reality (AR) - Devices (Mobiles, HMDs) that present both virtual and real worlds forming a dual perception of the world. For a user, the virtual world does not recognize the physical, but both are controlled by user interactions.
Mixed Reality (MR) = Devices (Mobiles, HMDs) that present both the worlds such that the virtual world recognizes the physical and creates a close-to-reality perceptionof the world.

Future of Virtual Reality

With VR technology becoming more and more accessible with companies like Google, Facebook, HTC and Sony all getting involved to become major players in the space, there are mindblowing possibilities of VR that could impact businesses in future.

Immersive Technology - How does it Work

A 3D world is delivered through a projector that is reflected through mirror’s/prisms into the eye. User interacts with the digital world using gestures – such as hand movements, fingers, full-body movement etc., gaze – which is locking on a virtual object with eyes, Voice – by speaking directly with the system. All these devices track the user interactions by using Sensors and Microphones within the HMD.

Gaze is tracked when an IR sensor reflects an IR beam into the light, and a receptor calculates the angle of reflection from the cornea to map it into the real world object.

A technique known as real world mapping is used to identify objects in the real space.

Introducing Microsoft Hololens

The Microsoft Hololens is an HMD that uses specialized hardware that runs on Windows 10 OS and delivers a virtual world as a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) App.

It is a Mixed Reality device that works on the principles described earlier. It maps out the real world objects using Area and Position mapping mechanism – that draws out the existing surfaces in the room before starting the virtual world.

The device allows all of the user interactions discussed earlier, and is mounted with sensors, speakers and microphones to create the experience of mixed reality.