Augmented Reality May Not Be Exciting

Oh wait, what is Augmented Reality? Hey, I know a lot about Augmented reality and it is of course so exciting. Why the hell do you think it may not be exciting? I hope you are comparing with virtual reality and calling it to be not so exciting? am I right? Nah..whatever, this is supposed to be a testing Blogosphere where only testing articles is shared, isn't? but now this title sounds so irrelevant to the testing community.

First, let me clear you guys on the blog title okay. So, are you someone who is working in AR domain? then yes you might feel bad about this title. However, if you continue to read upcoming context then you might nod your head and give me an yes - unknowingly.  Haha

Here you go, Augmented Reality (AR) lives in the mixed reality spectrum. AR lives between the real world and the virtual world. Just because, AR brings the elements of the virtual world into our real world how can it be made exciting? If it is exciting then it would have attained the global market place in large numbers, isn't?

The Wait Is Not Over

Augmented Reality was discovered to enhance the visual effect of real world objects. What did it do after enhancing the visual? put it back into the real world. Ah...how can one do it? Yes, through AR technology this is possible.

One such example could be, using AR technology we can create human body parts and make use of it for science graduates to visualize and understand more in details. Real sounds can be incorporated to the graphic visual by profound sound engineers. These were made to appear close to reality. But Is that real? Nope!

AR world sustained so far with Markerbased, Markerless, Projection and Superimposition technologies. There are many apps in the Appstore and Playstore developed using these technologies. Most of them call themselves to be successful comparing to other AR products. What makes your customer delight? All product success stories revolves around this brilliant question.

Let's me put forth this question to all AR product owners out there in the market? Is your customer happy?

AR is a very powerful word. It has not evolved completely. We all live in AR evolution. There could be more avenues in years to come. At the same time, many organizations have had made tremendous efforts to build lots of interesting avenues using AR. To name a few, Pokemon Go by Ninatic Inc. Harry Potter Wizards Unite is way more complex game than Pokemon. TaDa Time - 3D AR Messenger app by Augray Inc etc. Money and time is invested to gain this momentum in Research and Development arena. While the development of new AR products in full swing we are parallely creating new areana of testing scope as well. There is a huge demand for AR automation. This is the right time of the year to get us equipped with AR testing skills. AR apps are mostly camera sensitive, geo-location based apps which could potentially work with beacon devices.

We all know it is so difficult to test on varied android and iOS devices. Though there are many cloud testing tools which could help us leverage testing better. But still automating remote camera, recording and saving the recorded AR file in remote device and validating it, is still a challenge. Yes, this calls for new testing openings. New challenges in development and test automation pave way for new testing openings. Let us all enhance our skill set in this AR arena and grab more opportunities during upcoming years to come.

Yes, the wait is not over yet. It could be a long wait too...

 

Regards,

Shiva Mathivanan

PS: This image in this article represents an apparel advertisement in newspaper. If scanned using mobile phone can experience the actual product in 3D. I have used that image to represent augmented reality. The image is copyrighted to www.yeppar.com. With due respect I'm signing off right now. Please do write your comments and feedback to discuss more on this topic. Thank you!