AR Glasses in Gaming, Education, Medicine, and Art

Augmented reality glasses have been taking the market by storm since their introduction in recent years. You have probably heard of Google Glasses, a piece of wearables with a distinct design, which can help its users do everyday tasks without having to reach for their phone. There are, however, many different brands developing new and advanced glasses, some of which include Wuzix Blade and Intel Vaunt.

The history of the Augmented Reality itself is quite an intriguing one covering all the fields from entertainment (read about the Sensorama experience here) to education and medicine. But what about AR Glasses specifically? When are they used the most and in which fields? In this article, we cover 4 amazing uses of AR Glasses.

1. Gaming industry and interaction with the AR objects

AR Gaming Market is said to reach $284.93 billion by the year 2023 (Infoholic Research), so considering the enormous potential of this market and the vast audience it regularly entertains, it is no wonder the competition is enormous. However, one of the best tools to use for gaming right now is Magic Leap One Glasses, whose creator Ron Abowitz and his team have been working on for about 10 years before publishing the first version of the glasses. Google understood the power of these glasses and invested in the project about half a billion dollars, which further encouraged the production of them.

By wearing these futuristic glasses we are able to mix fantasy life with real-life. When you first put them on, the process of implementation of the information from your surroundings begins. This transformation is called meshing and it is done by following the signals the glasses show you to follow with your eyes and looking at a certain spot for a couple of seconds until they scan your environment. Afterward, you can implement any fictional objects in those surroundings as you wish.

source: https://insomniac.games/game/strangelets/

How does it feel like to wear them?

Imagine stepping into your favorite sci-fi show and living in it for a while. You can see the objects moving, you can throw them, pick them up, communicate with the character within a game, play as a character in that game and see the real world change in front of your very own eyes. It is quite a unique experience.

2. Education and new learning methods

We all learn differently. That is the most important part we have to understand first.

Some prefer visual ways of learning, some auditory, some kinesthetic, etc. but not one style can be applied to everybody. That is why it is extremely important to acknowledge all different approaches to solving tasks and make possible for students to reach their full learning potential by perfecting teaching methods.

Students usually encounter trouble in school because they are expected to learn in the same way. This is where AR, or AR Glasses to be exact, come in handy. By introducing new methods of learning, Augmented Reality offers extreme benefits not just for many students, but for teachers also.

So, how are the AR Glasses actually used in education?

1. AR Glasses can show teachers important information about every student, their best and worst areas.
2. They can show students an animation of an object they are learning about to help them visualize the material better and upgrade their photographic memory.
3. By using AR Glasses teachers can be informed about the learners’ gaps in knowledge, their time schedule, and use this information to come up with a hyper-personalized schedule for every student.
4. Teachers can find the most important information sources and methods that would suit the learners’ type and help them learn in the most productive way - making the ideal world, the optimal environment to learn in for that specific person.
5. It can help students be more creative and interested in the material they are learning about.

This all sounds amazing, but there must be some hidden dangers, right? Well, no, if we use them correctly:
The main thing to remember is that AR Glasses are just a helpful tool to acquire more knowledge, in a more productive way. You still have to implement that knowledge in the real world.

3. Medicine and treating phobias

AR Glasses are already used as a beneficial tool for rehabilitation, for making diagnosis and in therapy among other uses.

source: https://eonreality.com/classroom-3-0-webinar-re-cap/

Dealing with mental health issues in today’s world is a big challenge and using AR glasses can help aid the recovery process. Psychologists and computer scientists are using augmented reality to help treat phobias and this is how it works:

• By gradually exposing the patients to the issue, the glasses help simulate the situation a patient is scared of.
• Next, a patient can interact with the object within the augmented space and have a feeling of being there.
• After familiarizing themselves with the issue and getting more and more comfortable, patients can move onto a new level of simulation.

Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder and they vary from the fear of darkness to the fear of heights, so you can only imagine how impractical it is to expose some patients to the root of their problem, such as high buildings. Treatment of some phobias requires an approach, which is harder to achieve than others, and this is where AR Glasses really help.

How are AR Glasses used in the treatment of phobias?

The goal is to simulate the environment in which the patient feels anxious and slowly present them with tasks to solve, from simple to complex ones, until they feel secure in that surrounding. If it is a, say, phobia of heights, the patient would stand on a high scale next to an apple tree and would be asked to reach for the apples to pick them. At first, it would be an unnerving feeling which would gradually lessen as time passes.

Patients get braver in simulated situations because they know they are not real, it is all an augmented reality. This is called exposure therapy and the scientific definition of it is - to become desensitized to the automatic, physiological fear response. Patients acquire a new memory about safety around the phobia they are usually dealing with and that new memory can actually help decrease the influence of old memories.

4. Music and Augmented Reality

Magic Leap and Sigur Ros collaborated and made a unique ambient experience by stimulating the senses of hearing and sight with AR technology. They made “Tonandi” which means Sound Spirit in Icelandic.

source: https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-virtual-reality/t%C3%B3nandi

Thanks to their captivating work we now have the possibility to feel the spatial sound, touch the music and feel our surroundings with technology.

“I run my hand across the grass and hear a series of plaintive tones, like a stringed instrument gently picking out all the notes in a chord. I look down and see more grass coming up out of the carpet, then some kind of pitcher plant that seems to extend its undulating mouth toward my outstretched hand, like a pet expecting a treat. It responds to my touch with a sonorous sigh.” - Andy Hermann

Watch how they describe the process of making the magic:

To conclude, experts are making apps that are truly immersive and change how we interact with data. Imagine students being able to learn from a professor explaining DNA with a hologram or going through a museum via lenses and learning about art. Smart glasses are a thing of the present and the future. The accessibility of information will change our relationship with it, how we acquire new information and how it affects our daily life. AR has an important role in education since it can increase our productivity. It is scary and amazing at the same time to think that AR glasses will put literally any information in front of our very eyes.

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