June 2022

What’s the Difference Between AR, VR, MR and XR?
28 June 2022

AR, VR, MR, XR…There are a lot of acronyms tumbling around the internet concerning reality. But before we get into the modifiers, let’s talk about what reality is. When we say “reality,” we usually mean the physical world. Each person’s experience of reality is somewhat subjective, based on simple things like the way they see color and more complex factors like how they perceive an event based on their unique past experience.

Physical reality (without any digital enhancement) is at one end of what’s called the “virtuality continuum,” first introduced by Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino. Virtual reality — a full-immersive digital environment with the “real” physical environment completely blocked out — is at the other extreme. The other terms fall in the middle and around them.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is one step away from standard reality toward the digital end of the spectrum. With AR, digital elements are superimposed onto physical reality, giving us a composite environment made up of both real and digital elements. You can get an AR view through smart glasses or an app on your smartphone. Accuvein technology, which projects vein locations on a patient’s arm to increase accuracy during blood draws, is a good example.

Mixed Reality

You can imagine mixed reality in the center of the spectrum. Like AR, MR projects digital overlays onto the physical environment, but MR allows the user to interact with those digital elements as well. You can see the virtual dog in front of you and also scratch it behind the ears. Think of Tony Stark swooping those 3D digital diagrams around his multimillion-dollar “workshop.”

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is a totally digital environment with nothing of the real world remaining in view. VR often makes use of sight and sound to create an immersive experience but when touch is added, it becomes even more real for participants. The ultimate example of VR? The Matrix (of course). Here’s an entertaining video of the Fulham players struggling with a virtual reality “walk the plank challenge,” even though they know the height isn’t real.

Extended Reality

Extended reality or “XR” is the easiest to explain. It’s an umbrella term that encompasses all of the aforementioned ways of using digital content in our environments — everything from Pikachu projected onto the sideway in Pokémon Go, to well, again, The Matrix. AR, MR and VR are all types of XR.

The exciting thing about AR and MR in particular is how they are already being used. Apps can provide digital, 3D interactive manuals. Instructions for manufacturing and assembly can be projected right onto complex products to prevent costly mistakes. Driving directions can populate on a heads-up display so directions are step-by-step on the road in front of you. Once you have a basic grasp of what each of these terms means and how they fit on the continuum, it’s easy to see where they are already popping up in our very real world.

an augmented reality design model of a stretcher
How Augmented Reality Models Change the Design Game
16 June 2022

Building a product model or prototype takes time, money, materials and energy. And yet it is a necessary step in the design process to present your design to a stakeholder. Facts and figures, even 2-D diagrams only get you so far before everyone wants to see what the laptop, new medical device or treadmill is actually going to look like and how it will function. Augmented reality enables a virtual prototype that works just like a real, physical version, complete with a 3-D model that can be rotated, opened and taken apart at less cost using fewer resources.

Augmented Reality models revolutionize the design process.
AR Reduces Prototype Cost

Prototypes are often the largest expense in the product development process and can account for up to 80 percent of the development budget. Oftentimes, the first iteration of a model isn’t the final one, and creating updated versions takes even more time and money. With AR, models can be generated and modified in far less time, with less cost and less waste. And they can be delivered easily anywhere in the world, which brings us to our next point: accessibility.

AR Models are More Accessible

Shipping a model to a customer for a demonstration in their own space is costly and requires a couple of days’ lead time for shipping. If you are flying stakeholders out to observe a model, that cost is likely even higher. With AR models and prototypes, that product demonstration can happen in 3-D for many people at one time in multiple locations, delivered digitally, with no need to pay for expensive shipping or travel. Users can manipulate the 3-D models at will without safety concerns and without fear of damaging the product.

Better than 2-D Design

With larger, more complex design, 2-D modeling is often all you get. Vizworx President Jeff LaFrenz said that when designing an airplane, AR models can save a lot of rework. In a standard design review, a 3-D image is projected onto a 2-D screen, and the loss of dimension makes it difficult to discern how it will work in the real world. Mistakes are often not corrected until they’ve begun production. “We don’t get the insight around those spaces until we’re in them,” he said. “That’s where AR allows insights. We can reduce significantly the cost of infrastructure design and construction by giving them a spatial understanding through AR.”

Augmented reality models outperform physical models in all areas. They are less expensive, easier to modify, more accessible, more accurate than 2D models and produce less waste. AR product models are the future and none too distant.

Kaalo Augmented Reality App
Why People Don’t Read and How AR Can Fix That
09 June 2022

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”

~ Steve Jobs, 2008

Steve Jobs said this in response to queries about the possibility of Apple developing an e-reader almost 15 years ago. His cited statistic is debatable, but we are all bombarded by things we HAVE to read in order to discover what is important and what is trash — emails, spammy texts and the thick paper guides that still come with many of the products we buy. It’s no wonder that to preserve our limited attention spans and our sanity, we have started ignoring text instead of reading it.

How, then, do you get people’s attention? How do you teach them about a product when we have all become so skeptical of giving our time and attention to the written word which we fear may be worthless? Imagine packaging, brochures and catalogs that can provide everything the addictive internet can — animation, audio and video in three dimensions — through augmented reality (AR).

Kaalo’s augmented reality app, KAR, brings text to life.
Catalogs in Augmented Reality

Instead of trying to pare down a laptop’s stats into digestible bits of text that still include crucial, yet often dry, information like screen dimension, processing speed and storage capability, imagine someone could point their phone at the catalog image, see that laptop in their own space and have all of that data presented to them in interactive 3-D. The image can even be rotated and disassembled for the truly curious.

AR Packaging

Augmented reality packaging serves two purposes: marketing the product before the consumer purchases it and helping them figure out how it works once they’ve taken it home. Instead of cramming all that text info onto a box or plastic package, buyers can point their phones at it and learn all they need to know via audio, video and infographics presented in augmented reality. After the purchase, Kaalo’s augmented reality app, KAR, can help them with setup without having to include a lengthy manual in eight different languages. (The app can act as a translator as well.)

Jobs may have been right that the way we interact with text and reading is changing, but with change comes an opportunity to rise to the challenge. KAR caters information to the modern mind, the discriminating reader, all while reducing the need for so much paper. Kaalo recognizes that, in order to continue to meet consumers’ needs, we must grow. Because, as another well-known entrepreneur once said…

“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”

~ John C. Maxwell
Kaalo Augmented Reality
How a New AR App Makes Online Shopping Fun Again
01 June 2022
KAR, Kaalo’s augmented reality app, lets you view catalog images in 3-D.

You shop online a lot; we all do — all two billion of us and counting, according to data from 2020. The convenience of ordering a pair of shoes, a sofa or a new laptop from your living room beats driving to multiple stores to compare prices before finally making a purchase. The downside? You can’t see how those shoes look on your feet before you buy them or whether that couch would work, in blue, in your space. Is a 15-inch screen laptop big enough for your purposes? You have to imagine it, and if you’re wrong, you return, exchange and wait all over again. Existing augmented reality (AR) technology can help with that.

AR Catalog Images in 3D

KAR, Kaalo’s augmented reality app, lets you view catalog images in 3-D. You can rotate the product, explode its parts, explore what it would look like in various colors or with different materials or features. You can try those shoes on, virtually, and see whether you like them better on your feet in red or black. Project that sofa into your living room and see if it works with your current coffee table. Take the image of your potential new computer and rotate it, take it apart and explore all of its features in three dimensions. When you decide, KAR includes a “buy” button taking you directly to a secure e-commerce platform to make your purchase seamless.

What Kaalo’s AR App Can Do

KAR can apply this augmented reality technology to…

Interactive print technology, using augmented reality, brings static print to life in brochures, packaging and point-of-sale terminals with animations, audio, video and infographics — fully animated, three-dimensional details you can’t get from traditional print marketing. How cool is that? Stay tuned for more Kaalo AR posts coming soon.