Words Worth Knowing: AR
Words Worth Knowing was a vertical I wrote weekly explaining key pieces of gaming jargon to parents, guardians and teachers, as part of the larger overall GameHub outreach effort. The column ran for nearly two years and resulted in around 60 WWK articles. GameHubHQ.com closed in late 2017. This piece originally appeared on July 18 , 2016.
What It Is: AR = Augmented Reality
What It Means: AR gaming is a subgenre of games in which digital items, objects or characters are projected onto real world images, giving the impression of the two existing at the same time in the same space. VR (Virtual Reality,) by contrast, simulates an entire digital world and everything in it as though the player has been transported completely to another world.
Why You Care: AR is a gaming term worth knowing about because that's what kind of game Pokemon Go is! The game that everyone is talking about right now uses AR technology to project Pokemon animations onto locations captured by the device's camera, allowing players to "see" the cartoon creatures in the real world. Whilst a number of games and educational apps use AR, few have captured the public imagination quite as strongly as Pokemon Go. AR games are often used in museums and galleries to create interactive artwork and exhibitions.
