Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR for short) has become a major, cultural norm across the more advanced civilisations of Niyala; with upwards of 93% of the population having access to local Augmented Reality Objects, and accounts for over 78% of all Bridge Mesh Processing usage by sheer volume of operations.

Full use of AR requires a Neural Interface, though many individuals get by sufficiently with the use of glasses, contact lenses, and earbuds. Through these, an additional sensory overlay can be provided to citizens to convey further information, present advertisements, and allow people to benefit from a more interconnected world.

For individual users, the main benefits are things such as being able to perceive one's own GPS, phone messages, digital feeds and the like without looking at a device - seeing all such information overlaid over their vision, patched into their other senses as desired, and perceiving Holocalls as appropriate. However, the secondary benefit is in compatibility with AR Shared Environments.

Most geographical regions have a singular AR-Shared Environment, defined by corporate agreements with the various megacorps invested in it. Tireppi Global's eLife 2 is the most prevalent and well known. Through this, governments, councils, property owners, and residents can create digital experiences to interface with all users that have access to the relevant service - access is typically included in a user's phone plan, with differing tiers of course conferring different user experience advantages.

For the typical user, AR is used as an informative or decorative overlay. Street crossings are illuminated in green or red to indicate safety of passage, traffic cameras translate information of vehicles around corners to other drivers, to reduce the risks of blind spots, and storefronts can present digital, interactive menus and inventories to passing civilians.

AR-Environment Infrastructure

Very Optional Reading

While it can vary by region or implementation, generally AR-Environments are negotiated between a political, geographical body and a corporation. The corporation hands down limited authority over the entire AR network to the political body - and that body then cascades this authority however it desires, and can implement underlying rules as required.

The most common set up is that an entire city's leadership makes an agreement and implements a product. eLife 2 is used as an example. The city administration's central server sends a registry of all desired AR objects to eLife 2, which is then cascaded out through the Bridge network to all eLife 2 users in the city as needed. This process is repeated, with councils sending their AR Objects to the city administration, businesses and property owners sending theirs to the local council, and so forth.

As these provisions are handled by physical location, and is operated by having data sent to a 'parent' authority - this permits the parent authority to place whatever restrictions are desired, while still giving control to the relevant user. Business owners can freely change their AR facades, while individuals renting apartments can decorate their homes freely as desired.

Many deckers or netrunners enjoy exploiting this - defacing public property often only requires hacking into the business that owns the property they wish to deface, rather than hacking the world provider itself.