Somewhere between the harshness of reality and the fantasy of virtual reality lies the domain of Augmented Reality (AR).

The French company Total Immersion’s AR technology uses camera capture and 3D imaging techniques to blend surrounding and simulated environments in real-time.

ou’ve probably seen the videos floating around You Tube — people hold simple pieces of paper up to their web cameras and suddenly cool cars or a baseball player appear on the screen, seemingly right on top of the paper. The mash of real and virtual gives the illusion that both are occurring in the same space.

AR videos have been making the rounds on the Internet recently in part due to their nearly seamless blending of the captured and constructed images.

In the short term, AR will primarily be seen in two venues: interactive marketing and extended-content media.