Gadgets are moving away from reality – Hi-Tech – Kommersant

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According to experts, in 2025, 71 million virtual (VR) and augmented (AR) reality devices will be sold in the world, and the volume of this still quite young market will reach an impressive $ 22 billion. Experts note that VR and AR will increasingly enter everyday life. life and the last two years that the world has lived in a pandemic have played a significant role in the advancement of these technologies.

According to experts from the analytical company CCS Insight, 11 million AR and VR devices will be sold worldwide this year, which is almost 50% more than in 2020. But experts are confident that further sales of such devices will grow even faster. So, in 2025, according to CCS Insight, 71 million such devices will be sold, of which about 40 million are VR helmets. The company bases such an optimistic forecast on the very strong growth in sales of virtual reality helmets Oculus Quest 2, as well as the growing desire of consumers and companies to use VR and AR technologies in work and everyday life. CCS Insight estimates that in 2025, companies worldwide will purchase over 13 million augmented reality devices.

However, experts say that for these predictions to come true, two new categories of devices must appear and widely spread on the market: comfortable models of smart glasses with AR technology and attractively priced VR devices that connect to smartphones. More than 10 million of these smart glasses and nearly 8 million smartphone-tied VR devices are expected to be sold globally in 2025.

As AR expert at CCS Insight Leo Jebbie pointed out to The Guardian, smart glasses may well be used in the future, for example, to help the user navigate the terrain by providing information directly to the lenses of the glasses.

“Instead of looking into your smartphone and checking the route, you can just look ahead, and the lens will say that ‘now you need to turn left, and then take the bus that is coming around the corner.’

And all this will be communicated in real time, you do not have to break away from the conversation or open additional applications in your smartphone, ”he says.

This year, Snap (which owns the Snapchat messenger) introduced AR glasses that do an excellent job of overlaying images and allow users to film what they see directly with their eyes. So far, this model is available only to a small number of developers, and, in addition, according to experts, it needs improvement. One of the significant drawbacks: the glasses charge only lasts for half an hour of work. According to Leo Jebbie, who tried out this model, they are “quite heavy” and do not look very much like regular glasses. And for such a device to be in high demand, the expert believes, glasses should be light, fashionable and not have any technical problems. A lot of companies are engaged in the development of “smart” glasses – just in recent days, two manufacturers have presented their models at once: Huawei and Oppo.

But as soon as a convenient device comes on the market, a huge number of products will be released for it, says Giorgio Tarraf, technology director of L’Atelier BNP Paribas.

“As soon as we have the right device that will win our trust and with which we will be comfortable, then a whole ecosystem of applications will arise, as it was after the iPhone appeared in 2007,” the expert says.

According to experts, the pandemic gave a big impetus to the development of AR and VR technologies. People had to occupy themselves with something in self-isolation and “augmented reality helped get rid of boredom,” notes Marina Koycheva, vice president of CCS Insight. The growth in sales of VR and AR devices in the next five to ten years will be driven not only by the growing demand for games, she said. New technologies “will be applied to other formats of visual entertainment, video, education, information retrieval, participation in remote events or communication,” says the expert.

Last week, Snap at a regular meeting of developers of special lenses – tools for working with images that allow you to dynamically change the image displayed by cameras on the smartphone screen, and add different effects, including sounds – presented new software for VR. It allows you to scan the environment of a room and then use AR technology to make unusual overlays, for example, in the form of running icons, as in the movie “The Matrix”. Or, for example, a lens for applying images to buildings or landscapes, or a lens with which you can “try on” clothes or shoes without going into a store and without picking up these things. Bobby Murphy, Snap’s co-founder and chief technology officer, told The Guardian, “We’re already starting to get real pleasure in playing with the power to manipulate, change, and edit our surroundings.”

Alena Miklashevskaya

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