Unit 7 · Session 2
Web-Based Multimedia and Future Trends
🎯 Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, you will be able to:
- ✅ Define web-based multimedia and its components.
- ✅ Describe the core concepts of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).
- ✅ Understand the emerging concept of the metaverse.
What is Web-Based Multimedia?
Web-based multimedia refers to the use of multiple forms of media content on a single website to create a more engaging user experience.
The modern web is fundamentally a multimedia platform.
- Text
- Graphics & Images
- Audio
- Video & Animation
🌐 How the Web Plays Multimedia
- Until about 2010, most web video and animation needed a plug-in such as Adobe Flash.
- HTML5 (a W3C standard since 2014) added built-in tags:
<img>,<audio>and<video>. Now every browser can play media with no plug-in. - Adobe ended Flash at the end of 2020.
| Media | Common web formats |
|---|---|
| Images | JPEG, PNG, SVG, WebP |
| Audio | MP3, AAC |
| Video | MP4 (H.264), WebM |
🐢 Worked Example: Why Heavy Pages Hurt
A hotel's homepage shows 8 photos straight from a camera, at 5 MB each. A visitor's connection runs at 10 Mbps (megabits per second).
Before
- 8 × 5 MB = 40 MB
- 40 MB × 8 = 320 megabits
- 320 ÷ 10 = 32 seconds to load 😬
After compressing to WebP
- 8 × 200 KB = 1.6 MB = 12.8 megabits
- 12.8 ÷ 10 ≈ 1.3 seconds 🚀
Most visitors leave a slow page before it finishes loading. Websites also lazy-load images, fetching each one only when you scroll down to it.
📺 How Streaming Works
- Downloading saves the whole file before you can watch it. Streaming plays it while it arrives.
- The video is cut into small chunks of a few seconds each, stored at several qualities (for example 240p, 480p, 720p and 1080p).
- Your player measures your speed and picks the best quality for each chunk. This is adaptive bitrate streaming, and it's why YouTube gets blurry and then sharp again.
Data check: Netflix says SD video uses up to about 1 GB per hour and HD up to about 3 GB per hour. How many hours of HD can you watch on a 10 GB data pack? (10 ÷ 3 ≈ 3.3 hours, or about 10 hours in SD)
Adaptive Streaming
📱 Poll: Where Does Your Data Go?
Open your phone's data usage settings (Settings → Network or Mobile data).
- Which three apps used the most data this month?
- What kind of media does each one mostly carry: text, images, audio or video?
Hands up if your top app is a video app (YouTube, TikTok, Facebook or Instagram).
For most people, video is by far the biggest use of data. That's why compression and adaptive streaming matter so much.
Future Trends in Multimedia ⚡
The field is rapidly evolving towards more immersive and interactive experiences.
Virtual Reality (VR)
Creating new digital worlds.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Enhancing our real world.
The Metaverse
Building a persistent, shared 3D internet.
🔍 Trend 1: Virtual Reality (VR)
Virtual Reality (VR) is an immersive experience that uses a headset to replace a user's real-world view with a completely computer-generated environment.
- Goal: Create a convincing, interactive virtual world.
- Key Element: Full immersion, blocking out the physical world.
- Hardware: Requires a dedicated headset (e.g., Meta Quest, HTC Vive).
🧠 How VR Fools Your Brain
- One picture per eye: the headset shows two slightly different images through lenses, so the brain sees depth (stereoscopic 3D).
- Head tracking: sensors and cameras detect every turn and step, and the scene moves to match.
- Speed: the screen refreshes about 90 times a second, and must react to your head in roughly 20 milliseconds or less.
- If the picture lags behind your movement, your eyes and inner ear disagree, and many people feel motion sickness.
VR is multimedia pushed to the limit: 3D graphics, spatial audio, animation and interactivity, all in real time.
🎬 How a VR Headset Works
🔍 Trend 2: Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented Reality (AR) overlays computer-generated images and information onto the user's view of the real world. It enhances reality, rather than replacing it.
- Goal: Add a layer of digital information to the physical world.
- Key Element: Blends digital and real environments.
- Hardware: Often accessible via smartphones and tablets.
VR vs. AR: A Core Distinction
Virtual Reality (VR)
Replaces Reality
- Fully immersive
- Isolates you from the real world
- Transports you to a new digital environment
Augmented Reality (AR)
Enhances Reality
- Overlays digital info
- Interacts with your real-world surroundings
- Keeps you present in your physical space
🌈 From Real to Virtual: A Spectrum
In 1994, the researchers Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino described a continuum from the real world to a fully virtual one.
| 🌍 Real world | 📱 Augmented reality | 🥽 Virtual reality |
|---|---|---|
| No digital layer | Digital objects on top of the real view | Everything is computer-generated |
| Looking at a street | A phone shows arrows on that street | A headset puts you in a game world |
- Mixed reality (MR): digital objects that understand and react to the real room. For example, a virtual ball bounces off your real table.
- Extended reality (XR): the umbrella term for AR, VR and MR.
The Continuum
🧪 Activity: VR, AR, or Neither?
1. A Snapchat or Instagram face filter AR
2. Playing Beat Saber in a Meta Quest headset VR
3. An app that places a life-size sofa in your living room through the camera AR
4. A car that shows its speed on the windscreen (a head-up display) AR
5. Surgeons practising inside a fully virtual operating room VR
6. Google Street View on a laptop Neither: it's 360° photos on a flat screen, not immersive, with no overlay on your world. It's a tricky one!
Practical Applications 📊
AR in Action: Pokémon Go
This popular mobile game uses your phone's camera and GPS to make digital creatures appear in the real world, encouraging exploration.
VR in Training: Flight Simulators
Pilots use highly realistic VR simulators to practice emergency procedures in a safe, controlled, and repeatable environment.
🏭 AR at Work: Beyond Games
🛋️ IKEA Place (2017)
Shoppers point their phone at a room and see true-to-scale 3D furniture in it before buying.
🧭 Google Maps Live View (2019)
Walking directions appear as arrows on the live camera view of the street.
✈️ Boeing
Technicians wiring aircraft follow instructions shown in smart glasses, instead of looking down at paper diagrams. Boeing reported faster work and far fewer errors.
Businesses use AR when people need information in front of their eyes while their hands are busy, or need to see before they buy.
🎬 IKEA Place in Your Room
Local Context: AR in Nepal
How could AR enhance experiences in Nepal?
Tourism & Heritage
Point your phone at a temple in Patan Durbar Square to see its history, view 3D models of its original structure, or get a guided audio tour.
Trekking & Navigation
An AR app could overlay trail markers, elevation data, and names of mountain peaks directly onto your view through your phone's camera.
🇳🇵 Activity: Pitch an AR or VR Idea
In groups of 3–4, pick one client and design an AR or VR idea in 3 minutes.
Clients
- 🏔️ A trekking agency in Thamel
- 🛋️ A furniture shop in Kathmandu
- 🏥 A hospital training new nurses
- 🏛️ The Patan Museum
- 🎓 Our college
Answer
- AR or VR? Why?
- What exactly does the user see and do?
- What hardware is needed: a phone or a headset?
- What is the biggest barrier (cost, internet, content, motion sickness)?
Two groups pitch in 30 seconds each, and the class votes for the idea most likely to make money.
🔍 Trend 3: The Metaverse
The Metaverse is an emerging concept for a future version of the internet: a persistent, shared, 3D virtual space where users interact with each other and with digital objects.
Think of it as a 3D internet that combines aspects of VR, AR, and social media.
🤔 The Metaverse: Hype or Future?
📈 Big bets
- In October 2021, Facebook renamed itself Meta to signal its focus on the metaverse.
- In April 2020, about 12.3 million players joined a Travis Scott concert inside the game Fortnite at the same time.
- Apple launched the Vision Pro headset in 2024 at US$3,499.
📉 Reality check
- Meta's VR and AR division (Reality Labs) reported operating losses of about US$13.7 billion in 2022 and US$16.1 billion in 2023.
- Headsets are still expensive, heavy and uncomfortable for long use.
- Most people still prefer phones and flat screens.
Vote: In 10 years, will you attend a class or meeting in the metaverse every week? Yes, no, or only for some things?
✅ Quick Quiz
- Which HTML5 tag plays a video without a plug-in? <video>
- Why does YouTube switch between blurry and sharp? Adaptive bitrate streaming follows your connection speed
- Does it replace your world or add to it? A Pokémon on your desk through your phone. It adds to it, so it's AR
- What causes motion sickness in VR? The picture lags behind your head movement
- What is the umbrella term for AR, VR and MR? XR (extended reality)
Key Takeaways
- Web-based multimedia is the standard for modern websites, combining text, graphics, audio, and video.
- Virtual Reality (VR) creates fully immersive, separate digital worlds.
- Augmented Reality (AR) overlays digital information onto our real world.
- The Metaverse is a future vision for a persistent, shared 3D internet.
Discussion Questions
- What are some potential applications of VR beyond gaming and training? (e.g., healthcare, virtual meetings)
- How could AR be used to improve classroom learning in a university like ours?
- What do you see as the biggest technical or social challenges to making the metaverse a reality?
Exam Practice 📝
Short answer
- What is web-based multimedia? Give two business uses.
- Differentiate between downloading and streaming.
- Differentiate between VR and AR.
Long answer
- Explain the future trends in multimedia with examples.
- How can a Nepali tourism business use web-based multimedia and AR/VR to attract customers? Discuss the challenges.
Revise the answers in the full note linked on the last slide.
Image & Video Credits
Images
- Adaptive streaming overview: Daseddon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Woman Learning Design in Virtual Reality: Digits.co.uk Images, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- U&U Stereoscope: Bubba73, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Reality-Virtuality Continuum: Giovanni Vincenti, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Pokémon Go players, Square Aragon, Pau: Unuaiga, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Patan Durbar Square: Bijay Chaurasia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Meta Quest 3 front view: Roy.wonder.cohen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Videos (YouTube)
- Mashable, "What Is Virtual Reality & How Does It Work? | Mashable Explains" (40–112 s)
- IKEA, "Say Hej to IKEA Place" (0–48 s)
Thank You
Questions before we wrap this hour?
Next: Unit 7 · Session 3 — Multimedia in Business Applications
📖 Related chapter notes
Read first, then revise with this deck: