In today’s fast-paced global society it is extremely important that information is accurate and easily accessible with minimum user involvement, in the right place, time and context.
Augmented Reality is a technology that enhances the real world by combining objects in the environment with virtual content to create immersive interactions with the information. By utilizing the camera on mobile devices and smart-glasses, we can see virtual objects placed on the top of the “real world layer”. AR is a new medium to share information and could revolutionize our lives, similar to the internet or smartphones. Through Augmented Reality, it is possible to acquire information in the right place, time, and context, with minimal user engagement. It promises to completely transform many industries, such as e-commerce, retail, advertising, and manufacturing by delivering virtual content to users without disrupting their daily activities.
Our vision of the arVersed Reality
Imagine a world where virtual content is seamlessly integrated with reality. Such a world may provide relevant and personalized information to the viewer individuals could easily collaborate with each other by sharing virtual content despite being in different locations and businesses could leverage the power of Augmented Reality to more efficiently develop their workforce. Consider the possibilities of how AR could be used to address the challenges an individual faces on a daily basis: one could use AR navigation tools to avoid getting lost in a new city; a heads-up display could provide notifications reminding the user of an upcoming appointment; or even the tedious task of finding items in a grocery store could be made easier by guiding the user through the store.
In our vision for the future Augmented Reality will enhance all facets of our daily lives. Routine tasks such as going for a walk would never be the same again: every shop you walk past could be bursting with immersive virtual content; a group of friends could play large multiplayer games together with challenges sprawling throughout the entire city; tourists could watch sculptures come to life with vibrant animations providing additional information about the artwork they are viewing. In addition to the fun activities, users can rest easy knowing that their data is fully secure and their privacy is respected; no content will be shared with users without their explicit permission. Our goal is to ensure that each of these experiences are possible in the arVerse Ecosystem.
The arVerse Project overview
Our vision is to provide a unified ecosystem and community to simplify and accelerate the process of developing powerful AR experiences; creating a new AR experience should be as easy as uploading an image on Facebook. To attain our vision and advance the state of Augmented Reality, it is is paramount that the creation process is greatly simplified. Simplifying this process will involve building the “AR Cloud” to effectively handle the storage and retrieval of the massive amount of data that will power our vision. The arVerse Project is one of the few organizations already working on the “AR Cloud”, however a major difference between the arVerse and other projects is our emphasis on building an open and transparent ecosystem that encourages collaboration from the community. The brightest minds and experts in the industry will work together to establish standards and to ensure the arVerse becomes a unified augmented reality ecosystem. The economy based on arVerse Coins and smart contracts will be used to establish consistent rules for the arVerse community. We will create a new Digital Dimension to power the arVerse Ecosystem and to offload computational load from the user’s device by utilizing a distributed network to perform the operations, thus allowing high-quality content to be processed remotely and quickly delivered to the user’s device.
The arVerse Project components
The arVerse Project consists of several connected components to create a unified platform and will be used to solve technical, economic, and social challenges:
The arVerse Standard — The arVerse Standard provides a standardized approach for creating AR content thus establishing a consistent experience for users. A robust technical standard allows users to easily create high-quality, cross-platform experiences that persist across all devices. We believe a unified technical standard for developing AR experiences is crucial for reducing complexity and improving user experience.
The arVerse Digital Dimension — One of the most challenging aspects of building the AR standard is having our existing physical reality mapped into point cloud, therefore accurately displaying the real world as a constantly updating 3D representation. Making this dynamic representation of our world, also known as the Digital Twin, easily accessible to every member, is one of the major challenges for the project. The Digital Twin is a necessary component to allow for collaborative sharing of content between users and to obtain precise location in order to display virtual content in the correct physical location.
The arVerse Rendering Network (ARN) — To achieve seamless integration of Augmented Reality with the real world, the experience must be realistic; this requires a very powerful machine to quickly render complex scenes with a high level of detail. However the majority of smart-glasses and mobile devices are unable to meet these requirements due to the sheer complexity involved. We plan to utilize a powerful distributed computing network to perform the computations necessary to render the content, thus allowing mobile devices to only be concerned with displaying the content.
The arVerse Coin (ARV) — The arVerse Coin is a secure digital token built on the Ethereum blockchain. The arVerse Coin will be the only currency to exchange goods and services in the platform. It will be used also in the voting mechanism, introduced to community in order to make crucial project decisions.
The arVerse Crowd — We believe that the arVerse Project cannot be successful without the involvement of the community. We need your help to standardize the industry, create content, and contribute to development for the arVerse Project to succeed. The main principle for the project is that every component of the arVerse Ecosystem will be open-source and accessible by all members. We truly believe in crowd wisdom and a decentralized ecosystem of people with diverse backgrounds working together to achieve a common goal. We plan to run several bounty programs to build a strong community and provide necessary components to successfully run the arVerse Project. We will unite developers, hardware manufacturers, and customers to create a unique AR ecosystem and provide accessible technology for everyone.
The arVerse Marketplace — The arVerse Project will introduce an arVerse Marketplace to serve as a decentralized store for digital assets used in the ecosystem. Assets such as 3D content, development APIs, Digital Space, and much more will be available for purchase in the arVerse Marketplace and managed by the blockchain IPFS protocol. Community will use arVerse Coins to purchase the digital assets.
We need your help to build the future!
The arVerse Project is an decentralized, open-source and community-driven project and therefore anyone can contribute to the development of the project. Contributions could be anything from developing new features or simply providing ideas and feedback to the community; regardless of your technical abilities we would love to have your help. We invite you to work with us to build a future that leverages the power of Augmented Reality to enhance our lives. Please visit https://arverse.io to learn more about the project and also subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with development of the arVerse!