Is it too early for Augmented Reality?
Sunday, February 1, 2009 at 02:03PM Before I answer the question, let me refer you to this chart put out by Gartner this past summer. Notice that Augmented Reality is on the far left with a yellow triangle, which means “more than ten years” before mainstream adoption.
Ok, now I’m not going to argue what mainstream adoption is, as that would require a whole discussion of the Gartner research and a bunch of other stuff. What I will say though, is that I think that it will happen within ten years. The thing that has me thinking though, is the amount of mainstream EXPOSURE augmented reality is getting right now. This could drive (accelerate) mainstream adoption or it could be deleterious and actually handicap the technology so much, that it never reaches the mass market.
I’ve been tracking augmented reality on google, youtube, blogs, university research, and in the corporate world for more than a year now (and I’ve been aware of the concept and tech for much longer), and I can tell you that the exposure curve, or degree of exposure has been gaining a lot of critical mass in the last twelve months. Everyone is talking about AR right now, Microsoft XNA can do AR now, the FLARToolkit is AR in Flash, and tons of commercials are starting to come out with AR or “AR like” elements.
