Today’s Technology for Tomorrow’s Possibilities: Extended Reality (XR)

I used to think dating was all about coffee and fancy dinners, well, you can’t blame me, it is the usual cliché. Meet someone, go on coffee dates where you eat everything else except coffee, maybe a few dinners here and there, go back to your place or his, stop talking to each other or get married, and live happily ever after or block each other everywhere. Well, that has always been the order of the day for most of us living in Nairobi, me included until I met this kind gentleman.

On our second date, the Nairobi man took me to Nextgen Mall on Mombasa road. Obviously, I thought it was another usual date until I stepped into a virtual room that I had no idea existed. Allow me to take a glass of water or coffee and catch my breath because wueehhhh, somethings can kill you before your time, I am not kidding, or maybe I am. Virtual gaming is for those with strong hearts, it is a whole new experience on level a million. I was nervous, excited, anxious, and every little feeling in between. My nerves were so raw I could hear them screaming.

Technically, you are transported from your present to your virtual space, considering what you chose. If it is a fight, you will be right in the thick of it. If it is a race, you are right in the middle of it. Whatever reality you chose; you will be at the core center of it as part of the action going on.

At the start, I screamed my lungs out, by the end of it, I did not want to take off my virtual glasses because that was the most insane (in a good way) thing I had ever experienced! Come on, you got to experience this at least once before you exit this world. There are virtual realities for everyone and everything, this is the only time we are allowed to say that age don’t matter, literally.

Wikipedia says, ‘’Extended reality (XR) is a term referring to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables. E.g. It includes representative forms such as augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and virtual reality (VR) and the areas interpolated among them.’’

Besides gaming, extended Reality is taking over the world by storm, this is the technology to look out for. Some businesses are already using it and they are reaping big, these are the people already living in 2030, move along and join the wagon. Let’s say you want to buy a couch online, XR will let you virtually fit the couch in your living room so that you will know what it will look like once it is home. If this isn’t cool, I don’t know what is.

The most common XR use is on Google Maps. Street view is technically XR, as is the satellite view you can use during navigation. You also use XR every time you watch a game and you see that bright line, on the screen. That’s actually not there in real life. When you do a Zoom call and someone uses a virtual background or an I-am-not-a-cat filter, that’s XR, too.