Some demos were posted this week that make it easier to picture how technology can change reality.
The picture above shows a laptop in a perfectly normal apartment with a Game of Thrones augmented reality overlay. Stick with me and I’ll explain enough for you to know what that means, and maybe you’ll scroll back up and look at it again and say, whoa, cool.
First step: set aside the question of what device will be doing the magic. Maybe it will be smart glasses or contact lenses or nanobots. They’re all different ways to get to the same result. Smart glasses are so close that prototypes already exist; digital contact lenses started as science fiction but real labs are working on them today; and AR nanobots are nothing but science fiction in smart and funny novels by charming authors.
“Nanobots! Aren’t you just the most fun!” I hear you say. “But you’re about to lose me. I don’t read science fiction and I can’t picture what you describe.” That’s where these demos will help.
Reddit user u/jesser722 (Tiktok @iamjesserichards) created some concept videos. They are not real. They can’t be done with today’s equipment. These are demos. There are links at the end to the videos but they’ll make more sense if I explain what you’re seeing.
The demos are made to look like they’re happening on a Vision Pro – swim goggles strapped on your head and Apple-style gestures to switch scenes. Jesser722 used off-the-shelf video software and AI assistance to make these clips.
Looking through virtual reality goggles is fundamentally different than viewing something on a screen. Everything appears to be full sized, filling your field of vision. If you play a fantasy game on a Playstation, it stays inside the borders of the TV screen. If you play that game in VR, you’re standing in the middle of the fantasy world and you can look at it in every direction as if you’ve been transported there. The dragon is thirty feet tall and you have to look up to see its head.
The concept of augmented reality is: some device adds an overlay to the real world in front of you so you still see the real world but it looks slightly different.
Compare these two pictures from one of the Jesser722 videos. Imagine you’re wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset.
The top picture shows your unaltered view of your laptop on your desk in your apartment.
You reach out to a digital control and tap a button labeled “Minecraft.”
The headset takes the image from the cameras and analyzes it with AI. Then it adds digital effects. It’s all done in real time, adjusting to your movement and anything moving in front of the cameras.
As near as you can tell, now you’re sitting in front of a Minecraft laptop in a Minecraft apartment.
Reach out and tap a button labeled “Game of Thrones.” You can see what happens in the picture at the top of this article. That’s the Game of Thrones overlay, looking at the same desk with the same laptop and the same glass and the same sink.
Reality is still there. You’re still in an apartment. The refrigerator looks like it’s made out of ancient stones but if you get up and touch it, it’s still your refrigerator.
Here’s another example. Again, the top photo is what the real apartment living room looks like. The bottom photo is what you see if you turn on a tropical island overlay.
Now take your AR glasses to the Santa Monica Pier. The top photo shows the pier, the bottom photo shows exactly the same place with a winter overlay. The video goes on to take the scene through Dune, Interstellar, and more overlays.
There are infinite ways to make money from immersive AR effects. You might buy an overlay for its own sake to have fun seeing a Minecraft world. Game of Thrones and Harry Potter overlays would be profit centers. Corporations will buy advertising overlays. Once you have this kind of environment it’s easy to add game elements.
Augmented reality will arrive slowly, starting with simple images that pop up search results or walking directions or captions in your field of vision. Manipulation of the entire world in real time is down a long road after years of advances in AI and processing power.
But that’s the point. We’re on that road.
Click on the links for the four videos made by Jesser722. Each one is only 45 seconds-1 minute long. Augmented reality is coming, just as inexorably as winter is coming in Game of Thrones.
Lifeskin 1: apartment transformed with 1950s, 1500s, and horror overlays
Lifeskin 1: same video but with the original unaltered view for comparison
Lifeskin 2: apartment with Minecraft, Madmen, Game of Thrones, Love Island, Walking Dead, and Star Trek overlays
Lifeskin 3: Santa Monica Pier with winter, Titanic, Dune, Interstellar, and Minecraft overlays