Altered Reality is the future of human-computer interaction as well of the human-reality interaction. Virtual reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality are the terms often cited in context of the emerging interactive technologies particularly in the mobile domain. Of all these forms, augmented reality and mixed reality are considered altered realities. While mixed reality is relatively a new concept, Augmented Reality has been through many developments, applications and successful commercial ventures.  

Most engineers start their journey in embedded systems with microcontrollers. With microcontrollers, one gets a complete miniature computing system on a single integrated circuit. The CPU, RAM, ROM and Input / Output peripherals all on a single thumb size SoC. This very popular approach to learning embedded design and development is in fact just the one side of the complete picture. Working with microcontrollers (and microprocessors) is all about software-based embedded design. The microcontrollers have their own instruction set which remains fixed in size and operation. 

In the previous tutorial, FPGA and microcontrollers were compared. The FPGA is one of the technologies which let an embedded engineer access hardware design of an embedded system. Its greatest advantages include multi-threading, real-time processing, wide scope for custom ASIC design (within available logic blocks on the FPGA chip), reusability and single chip solution. It is highly recommended to get hands dirty on an FPGA board after some work on microcontrollers. After all, hardware design is just another essential twin to software design in embedded engineering discipline.