Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that features heavily in my Incarnate novel series. This technology isn’t just a science fiction creation, though. Just like in my story, it’s becoming more and more a part of our lives and only promises to become a bigger part in the near future.

Augmented Reality (AR) initially began in 1968 with Ivan Sutherland’s wireframe display. Later developments like Myron Krueger’s Videoplace, Louis Rosenberg’s Virtual Fixtures, Julie Martin’s Dancing in Cyberspace, all the way up to the Google Glass, Pokemon Go, and Apple’s recent AR patent demonstrate the increasing interest in this technology.

According to Lumus, video games based on Augmented Reality are predicted to reach $11.6 billion in revenue by 2025. Infoholic Research predicts compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 152.7% during the forecast period 2017–2023 to touch an aggregate of $284.93 billion by 2023.

AR isn’t just for video games, though. The adoption of commercial and enterprise solutions using AR devices is now becoming common. Industries from Aerospace to manufacturing, logistics and more are all looking at ways to use AR technology.

In my Incarnate series, AR evolves as the story progresses into the future. Beginning as glasses similar to the Lumus ones, they progress to contact lens and then even bionic eyes. You can see that the main character Eshe, in the artist interpretation for book 2, has one bionic eye.

Augmented reality in the Incarnate universe is used for everything from advertising to being able to see the names of other people – which is then often hacked for use as aliases by the forty-eights group – and up to seeing virtual avatars that show up on people’s ARs for video games…and for fooling people.

AR is still in its infancy, but it’s a real emerging technology that I’ve tried to use creatively in my story. The future will only show if some of the predictions in my novel series actually come true…