Augmented Reality Night Vision (As Imagined in 1999)

Augmented reality is not entirely new. If you haven’t heard about augmented reality before, then you’ve been living under a rock. AR provides a live vision of a physical, actual environment that’s improved by sensory input generated by computers. Notable examples of augmented reality can be found today and visual collaboration between companies aims to harness the potential of this technology.

Like other technologies,

augmented reality was not born easily. In 1961, Morton Heilig introduced the Sensorama machine, a multi-sensory device that looked like a large arcade game but produced environmental components like wind, stereo sounds and aromas. However, the device was way advanced at the time and was actually learning more towards the virtual reality environment. More works that helped bring the digital and physical worlds closer followed.

However, the concept

of augmented reality started to take off in the 1990s. The first properly functioning augmented reality systems were the virtual fixtures, which were introduced in 1992. Today, there are a lot of cool augmented reality tools, innovations and apps out there. However, while doing cool things can certainly grab people’s attention, making something really useful from augmented reality is a completely different story. Augmented reality night vision is just one of these.

While it might be cool

to be able to see at night using augmented reality night vision, it’s not just convenient. Putting on a pair of goggles with infrared vision would just be troublesome, isn’t it? Why would you wear something that’s inconvenient and uncomfortable to use? Moreover, even if a pair of goggles with infrared vision becomes available in the future, it would no doubt be expensive. New devices would eventually come out and infrared vision on goggles would lose its appeal.

Augmented reality is going through a lot 

right now and the actual technology to identify random elements in the real world does not truly exist yet. AR still has a long way to go, but there are clear indications of where this technology is heading. It will take perhaps another decade to see practical everyday applications of night vision as part of augmented reality. Until that, keep your candles and torches available.