Product Review

Augmented reality (AR) is one of today's most fascinating and future-oriented areas of computer science and technology. By overlaying computer-generated information on views of the real world, AR amplifies human perception and cognition in remarkable new ways. Do you like the virtual first-down line in football games on TV? That's AR. And AR apps are rapidly coming to billions of smartphones, too. Working in AR requires knowledge from diverse disciplines, including computer vision, computer graphics, and human-computer interaction (HCI).

 

Augmented Reality: Principles and Practice integrates all this knowledge into a single-source reference, presenting the most significant AR work with scrupulous accuracy. Dieter Schmalstieg, a pioneer of both AR foundation and application, is drawing from his two decades of AR experience to clearly present the field. Together with mobile AR pioneer and research colleague Tobias Höllerer, the authors address all aspects of the field, illuminating AR from both technical and HCI perspectives. The authors review AR's technical foundations, including display and tracking technologies, show how AR emerges from the symbiosis of computer vision and computer graphics, introduce AR-specific visualization and 3D interaction techniques, and showcase applications from diverse industries. They conclude with an outlook on trends and emerging technologies, including practical pointers for beginning practitioners.

 

This book is an indispensable resource for everyone interested in AR, including software and app developers, engineers, students and instructors, researchers, and hobbyists. For use in educational environments, the authors will provide a companion website containing slides, code examples, and other source materials.