Most people I know don’t think about augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality or the umbrella term for all these immersive technologies — extended reality, abbreviated to XR.
It’s not all the terminology that turns them off, it’s that they don’t really know how XR fits in their world.
I work in the tech industry and I happen to write about XR, so it affects my world right now in my day-to-day interactions with software developers and PR people. However, that’s my bubble. To my friends and family, extended reality still feels like a distant reality filled with overpriced headsets and virtual gaming.
But as the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach shows, XR is so much bigger than just that. If you don’t yet care about XR, here are a few things I saw at AWE 2024 that might make you reconsider.
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XR isn’t only about gaming: It can also be productive
AR can be productive.
The thought of extended reality can feel suffocating when most of your options are heavy headsets that aren’t comfortable to wear for hours on end.
Sightful’s Spacetop AR laptop wasn’t created with gaming or video at the top of its priorities. It’s focused on work and productivity, so you end up not with a clunky headset, but with a sleek pair of AR glasses that look like Ray Bans. They plug into the keyboard from a laptop that’s ditched its display.
Once you put on the AR glasses, a 100-inch virtual canvas appears, which you can fill with various windows, all overlaid onto the physical world in front of you. You can do pretty much anything you can do in a web browser, but privately and with much more real estate than what you would get from a traditional laptop. Imagine the work of getting multiple displays working wherever you bring your laptop, and you can start seeing the Spacetop’s appeal.
Even the biggest laptop can’t get this many windows open at once. Augmented reality doesn’t always have to be about visiting a far away planet or killing zombies. Sometimes it can just be about a more immersive way to check your emails, send work messages or create a presentation, whether you’re stuck on an airplane or sitting comfortably on the couch.
XR can create a more immersive experience at a museum
AR headsets provide interactive and educational experiences.
Extended reality isn’t always meant to replace what you see — it can augment it, too.
If you go to certain museums, you can enhance your experience through captivating audio guides. You slip on a pair of headphones and can quickly get more context for whatever you’re looking at on the exhibit floor. But what if instead of an auditory experience, you could get a more immersive visual experience?
At AWE, I put on the lightweight Magic Leap 2 AR glasses and walked through a makeshift museum filled with artifacts. I could clearly see everything in the real world, but as I got closer to certain objects in my AR glasses, I could suddenly see relevant information appear virtually. I could even interact with certain objects, pressing a button to see more information, or make other objects appear.
XR exhibits already exist, but technology like this could be adopted by more museums and galleries to help give richer and more immersive experiences to anyone who steps inside.
XR can be a creative outlet
As digital artist, you can use a digital brush.
Apple’s Vision Pro is geared towards productivity, but it’s also been pushed as a tool for creativity. And while it may feel cumbersome to be creative with a headset attached to your face, these devices are being used right now for writing, drawing and painting in VR. It’s not all about work and gaming.
Logitech’s new MX Ink stylus extends what you can do creatively on the Meta Quest by adding a smart, physical pen to help you create in the virtual world. You could definitely use a stock Meta Quest controller to do some of what the stylus is capable of, but the MX Ink offers precision, which is important when creating.
The stock VR controllers that come with your headset can be used to create in a clumsy fashion, but the MX Ink gives you more control when you draw, sketch or paint in VR or AR. Just as using your finger to draw on your tablet is more intuitively easy than drawing with a mouse, a pen unlocks so much more for creatives, allowing for greater accuracy and advanced features.
You can use XR to better control the devices in your home
Use XR hand gestures to control things in real life.
Among the ways we interact with the world, hand gestures are a surprisingly prominent and primal way to communicate. We can quickly call someone over or express our anger in traffic with a simple hand gesture, especially when words just can’t do the job. In the AR world, hand gestures offer a seamless and intuitive way to interact with the augmented parts, like move a floating window or play a video, but there are always ways to control the world — and not just virtually.
Doublepoint is a company that focuses on touch interfaces, and its WowMouse app allows you to control the devices around your home with your Android smartwatch and simple hand gestures. You can swipe your hand to skip a song on Spotify on your TV or rotate your wrist to dim a smart lightbulb in a lamp. You can connect your watch via bluetooth to pretty much any smart device to control it.
Although it’s debatable as to whether this falls under the XR umbrella, these same gestures are used to navigate through virtual spaces like VisionOS and Meta Horizon OS. And to be able to use them without a virtual display is a great introduction to the XR space in your home without having to spend a lot of money on extra hardware.
Watch this: Hands On with Spacetop the AR Laptop
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