Where does the complexity of augmented and mixed reality applications actually lie? In the development? In UI/UX design? In the concept? In the specialist area? In research? Or.... everywhere?
The fact is: programming is almost the simplest part of such applications. The example in the attached video consists of quite a few lines of code. Most technologies for MR/AR applications are already firmly integrated in the respective programming languages and are easy to use. This means that you can "build" a working prototype very quickly.
However, it will not be possible to create enterprise applications with these on-board resources, e.g. to scale, to get 10,000 users on the app, to enable the company-wide use of AR/MR, to realize business cases. Regardless of whether AR/MR is used in industrial production, in service, as a multimedia add-on for print products, in gamification, etc. - two things are needed to turn technology into a business case:
- the company must realize that AR/MR applications need to be "maintained". The prototype must become a scalable, updatable, expandable application that needs to be permanently enriched with content. Providing this content is often a major challenge. For example, when election posters start to speak, the associated videos have to be produced, classified, organized in terms of marketing and technically provided so that the politicians on the print poster then "come to life". When the service technician has the defective washing machine in the picture and the component to be replaced is to be highlighted, the associated exploded views, parts lists, 3D visualizations, manuals, etc. must have been identified, assigned and "sorted" into the app. When advertising in magazines begins to move, sales staff must organize the appropriate content (e.g. videos in the appropriate format) from the customer, the number of views must be logged and billing must take place. Users must also first "know" that they should view the product in AR/MR (and "why"). If users are to earn points by viewing certain content, for example, an infrastructure for gamification, bonus content, challenges, etc. is also required. All of these activities need to be organized, planned and tailored to the AR/MR application.
- the application must be technically capable of scaling on a large scale. This may be because there is a huge amount of content that needs to be captured using multimedia, or because large numbers of users are expected. AR/MR applications are multimedia applications that require clever and optimized algorithms for searching and finding, for quick access to content, despite the latest hardware. This is where the area of "research" comes into play. For example, we have been able to develop algorithms that optimize existing multimedia processing by a factor of 10,000 (see https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/3/33 or https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/7/2/70) and thus ensure that AR/MR becomes possible on a large scale in the first place.
This combination of organizational, (programming) technical and scientific knowledge leads to enterprise AR/MR applications that bring real and scalable added value to customers/users. For me, this is an excellent example of industry-oriented research and innovative applications.