Virtual and Augmented

Developers test the augmented reality services of “T-AR for Tango” at the T Open Lab in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province, on Aug. 31.
Developers test the augmented reality services of “T-AR for Tango” at the T Open Lab in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province, on Aug. 31.

 

SK Telecom is seriously looking into the realistic media service market, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) services, to support the era of 5G. As the company considers reality media as representative services that will lead the era of 5G in the future, it is accelerating the development of the related technologies.

SK Telecom announced on Sept. 1 that it is not only evolving its network but also preparing for future services, including VR and AR services and robots, in a bid to prepare for the 5G era when normal transmission speeds will be 1,000 times faster than now.

The company has selected AR and VR as future technologies that are near at hand. AR is a service that provides real-time information which is needed under a real environment, by integrating reality and virtual environments. In contrast, VR is a technology that simulates a physical environment and one's presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds, and lets the user interact in that world. SK Telecom has held a technology forum with Google and Microsoft on July 22 and begun cooperation with leading global firms in earnest.

The company is about to commercialize a service called “T-AR for Tango.” The service, which is jointly developed by SK Telecom and Google, has combined VR and AR. By combining a Tango device with spatial awareness and SK Telecom’s T-AR platform, it analyzes a three-dimensional (3D) environment to create virtual content.

The company has announced that it unveiled these technologies, which have been developed from 2012, at the Google I/O 2015 in May, and received an enthusiastic response. SK Telecom will grow the industrial ecosystem for the technology by connecting with its T Open Lab, a place where domestic small and mid-size developers can reduce development costs and create new ideas through SK’s research and development infrastructure. Once the 5G network is commercialized, realistic media will work to make it feel like a user is teleported, said the company. It means that “Experience Innovation,” a step beyond “Technology Innovation,” will become the business of the future.

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