Is augmented reality the next, big tech breakthrough? For years, Augmented Reality has been a technology threatening to happen. Like it's cousin, virtual reality, it's something of a science-fiction staple, and a technology that has been hovering on the sidelines for at least a decade. In the last four years it has crept steadily out onto smartphones and games systems without ever really doing much to invade the mainstream conscience. At times it's looked like the future, and at other times like next year's big damp squib. With new software and new devices, however, that situation is beginning to change… Not everyone is convinced. Blair Macintyre, director of the Augmented Environments Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology told the US magazine Wired that "You could not do AR with a display like this. The small field of view, and placement off to the side, would result in an experience where the content is rarely on the display and hard to discover and interact with." "In one simple fake video" Macintyre complained, "Google has created a level of over-hype and expectation that their hardware cannot possibly live up to."
