[Chemy JMHT]

Despite a lot of VR hype and the launch of multiple high-end headsets, augmented reality still managed to win 2016, according to Mashable.

Writer Adario Strange looked back on the last year of the VR/AR industry and found that the content and tools for VR haven’t quite caught up to the hardware and the market is still struggling to find a foothold with mainstream users.

Meanwhile, Pokemon Go and Snapchat pushed AR forward and caused major companies like Apple and Microsoft to bet on AR over VR for the time being.

It's a pretty long analysis and makes me think if we really believe that AR is only a Pokemon Go like app while Hololens is another thing, like MR, because I don't really feel like those apps which only place a 3d image in a video or an image should considered a competition against VR, but those where you are really interacting and getting info should be.

Here the article from Mashable: The Year VR finally arrived, and was outgunned by augmented reality

[iThunderbirt]

I can see why AR would be more on top than VR as some applications have been released a bit before recent VR offerings. In the case of Pokemon GO, well if more than a million people have a cell phone...BOOM the app is used by a lot of people around the world.

One thing I will say about Pokemon GO is, at the time playing it, I used the AR portion for only a couple of days. Then, disable the feature in terms of saving battery life. Then eventually, I just stopped playing. All this to say, I prefer Microsoft's approach with Hololens where if I owned one, it would be used more for information purposes then gaming.

For VR, the "cost factor" comes to mind. Also, devs need to take time to understand this new technology (as is with AR) so once they get a hang of it, I am sure we will see some other cool concepts/experiences. Hopefully VR hardware and components become more affordable as well

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[pjs37]

I can see why AR would be more on top than VR as some applications have been released a bit before recent VR offerings. In the case of Pokemon GO, well if more than a million people have a cell phone...BOOM the app is used by a lot of people around the world.

One thing I will say about Pokemon GO is, at the time playing it, I used the AR portion for only a couple of days. Then, disable the feature in terms of saving battery life. Then eventually, I just stopped playing. All this to say, I prefer Microsoft's approach with Hololens where if I owned one, it would be used more for information purposes then gaming.

For VR, the "cost factor" comes to mind. Also, devs need to take time to understand this new technology (as is with AR) so once they get a hang of it, I am sure we will see some other cool concepts/experiences. Hopefully VR hardware and components become more affordable as well

Posted via the VRHeads App for Android

Exactly AR's barrier of entry is literally a screen with a camera. VR has a much higher cost of entry if you take the broadest way of doing AR in any case. If you want to however limit to headset and glasses usage I think you will find VR did overall better then AR. Not to mention I like you believe AR is more or less on cell phones used as a gimmick. There is not that many good AR applications and from my limited interactions they simply rely on recognizing a real world item as an ancor. Whereas MS hololense system is a lot more fleshed out and usage cases a lot more varied.

If you take Pokemon GO out of the equation how do we think the two platforms compared? I would also argue they are not a competive thing as what works good for VR will only help make better AR experiences and vice versa.

There is a lot of technological overlap there and to say one 'won' and the other 'lost' makes it seem like they are competing for a market where it can only go one way or the other when in fact they are complimentary. Really all a VR headset needs to make it an AR headset is a camera to passthrough outside data and software to overlay virtual data on the real world data.