These last few years have seen renewed interest in virtual and
augmented reality, as Moore’s Law has finally allowed these
technologies to become available to consumers. Much of that interest
has focused on experiences for individual participants, or else for
people located remotely from each other, as in on-line gaming
applications.
The focus of our research at the NYU Future Reality Lab is quite
different. We are exploring how people will use future mixed reality
technologies to better communicate and interact with each other when
they are in the same physical space. Creating such experiences is
quite challening, as it requires very high spatial accuracy and very
low latency.
The argument for taking this more challenging approach is simple: When
given the choice, people engage in activities that involve the
physical presence of people they know, whether those activities be
seeing a movie or play, going to a music concert, dining at a
restaurant, watching sports, or just hanging out over a beer.
Physical presence will continue to be central to interaction
between people. We envision the resulting future as a place where
language itself will take on new and rich visual dimensions, a sort of
combination of Harry Potter and Harold and the Purple Crayon.