Desktop Augmented Reality app with voice commands and the Importance of User Experience

Desktop Augmented Reality app with voice commands and the Importance of User Experience

With technology constantly pushing boundaries and redefining our digital experiences, one area gaining significant momentum is augmented reality (AR). AR has the ability to revolutionize how we interact with digital content by seamlessly integrating virtual elements with the real world. Although AR applications for mobile devices have gained popularity, we want to emphasize the significance of user experience when dealing with desktop augmented reality applications. A desktop AR app with voice commands can considerably enhance the user experience. The user experience (UX) is critical to the success of any digital application, including desktop AR. Desktop AR must provide intuitive, engaging, and seamless interactions to meet user expectations. The user experience should feel effortless, with natural navigation and meaningful interactions with virtual elements.

Advantages of AR Applications for Desktops with Voice Commands

1. Improved Interaction Users can seamlessly interact with digital content using natural language commands with a desktop AR application featuring voice commands. Complex gestures and keyboard input become unnecessary as the experience becomes more intuitive and accessible to a wider audience.
2. Improved Efficiency: Voice commands in desktop AR applications simplify users’ interactions, allowing them to perform tasks more efficiently. Users can create, manipulate, and navigate virtual objects with a simple voice command, reducing the time and effort required for complex tasks.
3. Engaging User Experiences: Through the combination of desktop AR and voice commands, users can fully engage themselves in immersive and interactive experiences. With intuitive voice interactions, users can explore virtual environments, interact with realistic 3D models, and even participate in real-time collaboration with others.
4. Equal accessibility for all: AR applications for desktop, featuring voice commands, have the potential to remove obstacles for users with limited mobility or visual impairments. By offering alternative input methods, such as voice commands, these applications make sure that all users can enjoy the magic of AR.

As the demand for desktop AR applications grows, organizations must prioritize user experience in order to deliver exceptional interactions. We can create intuitive, efficient, and engaging desktop AR experiences by harnessing the power of voice commands. A focus on user experience will be key to unlocking the full potential of desktop AR applications, whether it involves designing user-friendly interfaces, integrating advanced speech recognition technologies, or optimizing interactions for different use cases. By doing so, it enables transformative augmented reality experiences that redefine the way we interact with digital content in the desktop environment.

M. Compagno

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APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING AUGMENTED REALITY EXPERIENCE

THE SCIENCE BEHIND TIME’S NEW APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING AUGMENTED REALITY EXPERIENCE

TIME this week launched TIME Immersive, a new iPhone and Android app that we’ll use to deliver groundbreaking augmented reality and virtual reality experiences. First up: the TIME Moon Landing experience, the world’s most accurate 3D re-creation of the Apollo 11 mission, which took place 50 years ago this month. Users can watch an approximately five-minute AR simulation of the Apollo 11 landing, narrated by TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger and featuring original NASA audio from the mission, then explore the surface of the moon on their own.

What makes the TIME Moon Landing hyper-accurate? At the experience’s core lies incredibly precise data meticulously collected over the last 20 years by John Knoll, the chief creative officer and visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, a top Hollywood special effects company founded by George Lucas.

“I’m old enough to remember seeing the Apollo 11 landing live as a kid,” says Knoll, who gave his data to TIME. “That really left a big impression on me. In the years that followed, I was always fascinated with the space program.”

Knoll began collecting Apollo 11 landing data after stumbling upon a transcript of radio calls between the spacecraft and mission control. Those transcripts, he says, underscored the harrowing few minutes just before the “Eagle” lander touched down on the lunar surface, when it was running dangerously low on fuel. That moment, says Knoll, was largely glossed over in the Apollo 11 documentaries of his youth. “In reading the timestamped transcripts, this is white-knuckle time,” he says.

Knoll’s commitment to accuracy came in part from his disappointment with some Hollywood directors who pay lip service to scientific precision but abandon it in favor of what they or the studios believe is better storytelling. “I was very committed to making the re-creation as technically accurate as I could make it, in getting everything right about the motion of the spacecraft, the lighting conditions, the lunar terrain, where individual rocks and craters were,” says Knoll. “And to figure out if there were clever or sneaky ways to extract data from unlikely sources.”

To that end, Knoll relied on a handful of data sources, including NASA telemetry graphs, footage from a descent camera on the lunar module (LEM), and data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a probe orbiting the moon that was launched in 2009. He made up for shortcomings in the data with advanced computer vision techniques, including one process whereby the altitude of moon surface features can be estimated based on how bright or dark they appear in photographs.

“When you look at a photograph of the moon, and you see all that light and shadow, what you’re seeing is the orientation of the surface relative to the sun,” says Knoll. “If a surface is brighter, it’s because it’s inclined more towards the illuminance, and if it’s darker, it’s because it’s inclined more away. If you start on one end of an image, and if a surface is lighter than the average then it’s inclined up, so you accumulate the altitude, and if it’s darker, it’s declined, and so you decrement the altitude. By doing that, you can integrate an approximation of the terrain.”

Knoll hopes that the experience helps people better understand and take pride in the complexity of the Apollo project.

“I’m a big champion of science education, and people really understanding what we achieved,” says Knoll. “Those Apollo missions were great and amazing, and especially in these very divisive times, everyone regardless of their political affiliation can look back with some pride and look back at the accomplishment.”

The TIME Moon Landing experience was co-produced by TIME, John Knoll, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office, Trigger, RYOT, and the Yahoo News XR Program. It is available within the TIME Immersive app, which you can download for iPhone in Apple’s App Store, or for Android in the Google Play Store. Look out for more TIME Immersive projects in the near future.

 

 

 

 

 

credits: https://time.com/5626529/apollo-11-time-app/