Future Vision 2012: Augmented Reality Predictions
Monday, October 26, 2009 at 12:41PM Within three years (in time for ISMAR 2012), which is either a very short period of time or an eternity, depending on your point of view, I predict the following:
* 1 Million wearable displays, with transparent lenses, reasonable field of view, integrated accelerometers, and possibly a high-bandwidth short distance wireless connection, sold on the commercial market.
* Market generating more than $1B in revenues
* Vuzix currently the best positioned to deliver technology and products to the commercial market.
* Vuzix, Microvision, and Lumus Optical the current leaders in wearable display technology
* Companies like Sony, Apple, and others will have branded versions of their own. Probably with licensed display tech, or the fruit (ha! apples) of their own R&D.
* There will be at least one terrorist attack that has used mobile augmented reality for planning, practice, and execution.
* Marketing, Advertising, and Entertainment will be the early industry leaders to adopt and monetize augmented reality. More practical uses in visualization, training, education, medical, manufacturing, etc. will follow closely, but take longer for adoption as some technology requirements will be more stringent.
* The problem with visual tracking, registration, and orthorectification will be solved within the next 18 months, if not sooner.
* North America will continue to lag behind Asia and Europe. Early market dominance (in terms of mindshare and branding/exposure) will be led by Europe. Asia (particularly South Korea, Japan, and China) will be the quickest markets to adopt and monetize AR. North America will continue to be insular, inward looking, and still lagging behind.
* In general it will take North American venture capitalists and institutional investors at least another 18 months to wake up and engage fully. In the meantime…
* within the next 12 months, a flurry of augmented reality startups will come out of the woodwork in Silicon Valley, and will likely be overfunded startups looking to make a quick dollar and a fast exit. The majority of these will not have a clear strategy, vision, or technology, and will ultimately die a slow death. The early attempts will be on trying to leverage Web 2.0 and Social Networking into Augmented Reality, but this is backwards. Anyone trying to augment web sites or facebook is missing the point entirely.
* The first major VC funding of a augmented reality startup, of at least $5M USD will occur in the next 6 to 9 months.
* The “big boys” will continue pouring more money into internal projects and R&D, focusing on key technology areas, preferring to acquire companies with a broader focus, market share, and applications.
* By 2011, augmented reality will be a target rich environment for acquisitions, and some of the valuations will be staggering.
* Mobile devices combined with wearable displays will prove to be the ultimate combination for the full potential of augmented reality.
* A huge shift in advertising dollars will have a measurable impact on traditional channels, such as print, broadcast, and web. The mobile device already has broader and deeper market penetration, with more information about the user possible. AR will be the method to leverage this the most.
* In 12-18 months, Governments will begin to wake up to the real benefits, implications, and risks of mass-market mobile augmented reality in terms of national security, defense, intelligence, law enforcement, privacy, intellectual property, and so forth. Questions and concerns we have now with the internet, virtual worlds, and social networking will pale in comparison and are merely foreshadowing the future.
* The IPhone will not be the king of the hill. However, Apple will eventually open up their API and quit stalling AR innovation. I also predict their attempt to patent a grossly broad invention of augmented reality on a mobile device will be rejected, or at least suffer significant paring down.
* Mobile Augmented Reality will likely be a contributing factor to economic recovery with the creation of wealth (revenues), new industries, many new companies and jobs, as well as entirely new professions. Artists, designers, developers, educators, trainers, interior decorators, architects, and others will all find new opportunities and job titles.
* Augmented Reality will possibly be rebranded as something else, likely based on the product name of something. This sort of thing has happened in the past where a product has become synonymous with a brand (Xerox, Kleenex, etc.)
* Augmented Reality content (virtual objects) will be referred to as Holograms by the general public, changing the definition of the word. [Personally, I’d prefer to call them holons]
* Early standards, protocols, and methods of ineroperablity will emerge in the next 12 months, but will be radically different in 36. The “best practice” now is to use off the shelf where possible for speed of development, followed by new ones that are designed from scratch for AR and context, relevance, time, and space (location).
* Also within 36 months, early “holographic” interfaces will be experimented with, the industry will finally develop its own lexicon, and there will be much discussion and prototypes for a system of 3D icons (iconographs?) that will eventually become a visual standard for representing different types of data and information in augmented space.
* Tight registration and body tracking from any angle will also be accomplished, enabling users to anchor 3D objects such as clothing, armor, rabbit ears, masks, and animated textures/tattoos to themselves. The Cosplay, Furry, Trek, D&D, and SCA nerds will spend more money on this than the height of the Magic the Gathering industry.
*Virtual pets will be phenemonally successful and will likely be THE christmas gift in 2012. Due to the glasses, and full visual tracking, users will have a Denno Coil type of experience, where the pets can follow them around, interact with other pets, and do all sorts of fun things. Next-generations of this will evolve into “best friends” which will effectively be intelligent agents with limited voice recognition and a host of functionality. Yes, the porn industry will be all over this. As will the Otaku nerds wanting an anime girlfriend.
* Destination experiences, such as Las Vegas hotels, concert halls, sports stadiums, museums, and so forth will all be highly augmented to some degree or another, starting from content and services tied to the location with useful visualizations, to full-on 3D stuff all over the place. It is questionable at this time whether this will be an amazing experience, or if another few years are needed for better implementation, higher standards and interactivity, and adoption.
* Telcos will be at risk of being marginalized.
* AR in the medical field, both practice and research, will establish itself as useful. It will take more time to become necessary.
* A whole subculture of artists, both traditional and urban (grafitti) will begin to assert itself within 18 to 24 months, experimenting and provoking with hidden AR art.
* Branding wars, over what is linked to the brands of major companies, will begin. Overlays based on image (logo) recognition have the potential to be greatly misused.
* Government use of augmented reality will call many things into question. Of particular concern are submlinal messages or other methods of influencing people based on biometric sensors, and other feedback data, combined with visual and auditory cues and triggers.
* The mobile device will have completely replaced the wallet in some countries, and will begin to make inroads in western countries.
* The vision of Dream Park (albeit in a slightly different manner) will begin to be realized as the technology matures and the game industry embraces the cutting edge of mobile AR.
* Telepresence, using life sized avatars in remote locations, will become useful, and not be a gimmick.
* The mass media will completely FAIL when describing augmented reality.
* Some venture capitalists still won’t get it and will wonder why it takes more than $50k to build a company when you could just create a facebook widget or a basic iphone app for the same amount. Further, they will still think this is all a game because it has 3D in it.
* User generated content will dominate.
* No, still no AR contact lenses. Maybe 2018-2020. No mind reading devices either.
* The first major mass market augmented reality April Fools joke will occur on April 1st, 2012
* It will take longer than 3 years for AR to become ubiquitous in education, medicine, and therapy, although early experimental applications and research will gain a lot of ground.
* There will still be no singularity, neither will the internet become self-aware, although a famous celebrity or politician will take credit for inventing augmented reality.
* Bruce Sterling will likely comment on his blog about what I have written here.
My name will still be Robert Rice, and construction on my evil overlord lair will be nearing completion. All your augmented reality will belong to me. Or google.
[* Seriously. You MUST watch Denno Coil. The whole thing. In Japanese with Subtitles. Right now. If you haven’t seen this, you shouldn’t even be in this industry.]
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Reader Comments (22)
Historical societies will find a lot of use in AR as they'll be able to attach architect interviews to the structures they designed. This is our medium-term goal with @doorsopendenver.
People will be able to see the story behind things they're buying: not only what it is and how much it costs, but the "carbon footprint" (see the supply chain that led to the product in front of you and what tradeoffs they made in order to squeeze out more profit) and tax implications (who gets how much tax from everything you buy, and where those tax dollars go).
Craigslist will prove the axiom "easy come, easy go" as people skip yet another middleman and start attaching their classified ads directly to themselves or the objects for sale or rent.
Oh, and foreign subtitles will find their way out of TV programming and into Europe's convoluted highway sign system. No longer will you get lost traveling from West Germany into East Germany and experiencing the subtle shift in signage.
* Within three years augmented reality will be more than a layer of data sitting on top of the real world. The world itself will become a canvas for data. That is, AR will be turned on its head in what I've taken to calling 'reality augmented data' RAD. (See: RAD: augmented reality turned on its head: http://bit.ly/48cqq3.)
* But that's the least of it. The real world and data will become thoroughly woven together - not merely 'augmented'. (See: A history of the future of computing: why AR is where it’s at: http://post.ly/ACcf.)
* In 2012 my own evil overlord lair will also be nearing completion, but first I have to decide whether it will be built for iPhone or Android.
* An AR startup will be funded because someone will speak with authority and use important sounding numbers like "more than 300 million people in the US use vision to see things. They are our ideal AR market. We only have to get 0.0005% to make $1.0B. What are you waiting for to shower me in lots of money."
* Virtual pets will be phenemonally successful and will likely be THE christmas gift in 2012.
I'm a known pessimist, and that's why I'm willing to bet a fancy dinner at ISMAR2013 that this won't come true.
Otherwise excellent post, and an excellent comment by Thomas.
I have my own predictions for 2010 but I'll wait till December to post them, hopefully none of them will come true by then.
Nhtzragrq Ernyvgl vf srngherq ba Bcenu
Robert,
I so hope that you will be right. Even if only half (the correct half) will come true I will be happy ;-)
Very nice post, thanks. I consider myself a short pessimist, long term optimist. I really hope this stuff will be done in such a small time frame, I really do - but if it to be done it will need a Google or a Microsoft or Similar behind it.
My (unfortunate) prediction:A rabble of small companies with their own competing standards will be counter-productive, and push your whole timeline forward a couple of years.
Jung vf guvf Bcenu lbh fcrnx bs?
David,
That is why Ori Inbar and I founded the AR Consortium. (www.arconsortium.org). Still small and early stage, but a good start.
Robert
Oh yes I don't mean to spoil your parade, I'm sure progress is being made. Perhaps some of us that did not make ISMAR are not quite so buoyant. :) We get only scare youtube videos and of course some very excellent blogs.
You mentioned in your article that trying to link AR with Social Network is a bad idea and is destined to fail. I'd really liked if you clarified your view on that because I must say I don't understand. I never was a real user of Facebook and Tweeter but I can still see the advantages of being able to use them.
The possibilities of enhancing reality by adding a social layer is limitless. I feel like your judgment is based on some hate of social networks or something like that.
Would you like to detail this point?
I'm not sure why people assume I hate things when I vocalize an opinion as to why something or a particular approach is wrong. Apple is one example...the company is good, but their lockdown of certain elements of their SDK is hampering development.
I actually love social networks and have been a huge proponent of them for a long time, even before they were mainstream. I think that social networking and elements have tremendous value and opportunity for augmented reality, but I think it is a mistake (or rather a backwards approach) to try to take something like Facebook and try to augment it, especially as the focus of a startup. Rather, the better approach is to attempt to leverage the data and human relationships in Facebook to enhance augmented reality experiences. Augmenting a website misses the whole point of mobile AR, which is best expressed as something relevant to who you are, where you are, and what you are doing. The website shouldn't be the destination, the user and their environment should be the destination that is augmented or enhanced.
Robert
I agree with you now. I'm sorry, I was a bit rough in my comment. I'm new to your blog and should have looked a little more before commenting.
What you detailed was actually like putting facebook advertisement on AR. I agree that, if any social functionnality is to be in AR, it must be perfectly tailored for it and not just a billboard for the website functionnalities.
I tend to be an optimist. If one of the "billboard" is released in AR, it won't be long before another company actually see the potential gain. It might also be Facebook themselves that decide to secure their ground with an a hybrid model between AR and Web. They already have an API, so I guess that using a good architecture, it could be profitable. Especially since all previous data could also be used. Not everybody is ready to "start new" all the time.
I think the power of this kind of technology will come from the merge of old and new. If we try to start from ground up again, it will undeniably slow progress and slow user acceptance. I'm still unsure how this could be done however.
Simon Dufour
Regarding social networks... I think what will happen is that more AR layers will start to have access permissions based on user groups and that more layers will be authored for specific affinities. Unlike POI layers that are available to everyone, social layers will emerge for in-group markups, shared experiences, and blurred reality games (as well as new media experiences for Hollywood et al).These will likely be opt-in channel layers that will have interoperability with Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace comment & entry points.
It's inevitable that social networking and AR will merge, iMHO. Though, as you suggest, it won't be as simple or hamfisted as shoving a Facebook page into an AR layer or rendering tweets across the viewport. But the affinities & social maps that underlie these services will certainly be extended into the AR space as a means of bounding layers with permissions and defining custom audiences for AR content authoring.
I just finished reading your "Future vision" page and I must say it was really good. It gives a completely different perspective to this post. I'm impressed.
Simon Dufour
* Also within 36 months, early “holographic” interfaces will be experimented with, the industry will finally develop its own lexicon, and there will be much discussion and prototypes for a system of 3D icons (iconographs?) that will eventually become a visual standard for representing different types of data and information in augmented space.
Are you familiar with Greg Bear's EON? (circa late 80s - reference: 'pict' symbols)
* Augmented Reality content (virtual objects) will be referred to as Holograms by the general public, changing the definition of the word. [Personally, I’d prefer to call them holons]"
Makes sense. Except you can't. Familiar with Ken Wilber and Holonics?
If something like Peter F. Hamilton's 'affinity' springs forth in the next two decades, current (and even near-future) notions of augmented reality (both mainstream and tech-kiddie) will be infantile in comparison.
Great post.
We're organising an AR event in Rotterdam on December 4th for V2_Centre for Unstable Media.
Focus: The (emerging) ecosystem of AR
Goal: Dialogue between different players and sectors.
Layar will be there,
do you want to be there?
Kwela
Simon,
Actually, I can. Holon has meaning outside of philosophy. Koestler coined the term in "The Ghost in the Machine", and it is used in ecology and quantum mechanics. The root of the word, holos, is Greek for whole, and is the same root for hologram and holograph (whole writing or whole image).
/shrug/ I like it, I think it fits, and I have been using it for a while. But yes, I have heard of Wilber. I researched holons over a year ago and looked at several disciplines.
I am also familiar with Bear's EON. Not familiar with Hamilton though, I'll have to check it out.
Kwela,
That sounds like a great event. Unfortunately, I have a small travel budget, and this keeps me from going to many of the events and conferences as I would like.
Robert, seems you got me confused with Simon. Perhaps an error in reckoning the page layout bordering posts. In any case, I thought you might've been familiar with Bear and Wilber. My comment on 'holons' was a little tongue-in-cheek. I don't know as Wilber and Holonics will ever breach the real mainstream, but he's certainly making waves. Or was. I haven't been keeping up. (Almost a 'shameless plug': you'll note my linked site is, I consider, steps beyond Holonics, though Holonics was certainly a stepping stone in the path.)
Yeah, Hamilton's use of bold text, and how he wrote the sequences, to portray 'affinity'/convey the concept of it, were intensely provocative. I've read a lot of SF, and haven't experienced anything quite like it in others' writings.
Heh, I blame that on lack of sleep and the page layout : )
Robert, this is a very bold prediction.
If even 50% of what you saying will consume over the next 3 years, we can speak about the birth of a new Web, this time one that is really blending with our reality. It even might be tagged as Web 4.0, or whatever will be the next number then.
I do think it all depends on how soon the wearable devices will become available, as there is not much fun in running with smart-phone around.
I just read your other article about VC and it kinda depressing, it exactly because of that attitude same Web mistakes will result again:
Stage 1 - VC ignoring the AR
Stage 2 - Several high valuation deals happening
Stage 3 - VC pumping lots of cash in any company with AR in it's biz plan
Stage 4 - AR bubble bursting
Stage 5 - Long way to recover
Or maybe I wrong and this time it will pass, mostly because VC see it as another "game", and there won't be any investing craziness.
Lets see how it rolls out.
By the way, following Robert advice I did seen several episodes of Denno Coil. While the concept is awesome, I didn't get one thing, and it's how the tactile sense is handled there.
I mean, to have a pet you need a basic option of touching it - you know, "petting" it with your hand. Other then having gloves I don't see any option right now, which kind of kills all the point in my eyes.
Maybe there are some developments in this area? I can't think of anything short of direct interface with ones nerves to simulate feelings, which seems a bit far-fetched for 3 years time frame.
There are a couple of ways doing tracking for hands and gestures. There is no tactile feedback, However, I don't think it is quite necessary to have full tactile response, as long as the media (objects, whatever) react in the proper fashion visually (and maybe with some aural stimulation), the brain sort of fills in the blanks and the experience is "good enough".
Actually it seems Japanese are leading the world on this as well, and introduced a device called "haptic ring" on latest siggraph.
http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10001765-8.html