Modified Reality

Google Glass is a pair of glasses that double as a display screen. You can see the world as-is through them, and data can be displayed about the things you see. That's Augmented Reality in a nutshell.

Virtual Reality uses goggles that contain screens only. Everything you see on the screen is a created image, unreal.

Modified reality adds a stereo camera-pair to the VR goggles, so that it can present a real-world image on the screen whenever wanted. However, in-between the image-taking and the image- displaying, the computer can process the image to present the wearer with Modified Reality.

For example, you could be walking down a crowded street, and you won't bump into anyone simply because the locations of others on the walkway will be Real --but their images might be changed so that 1/5 of them look like Klingons, 1/5 of them look like Jar Jar Binks, 1/5 of them are unchanged in appearance, children look like velociraptors, and so on. This particular use might help cure people of xenophobia.

For another example, cars might look like contraptions from Dr. Seuss or Rube Goldberg, but since their modified images still occupy the same space as real cars, you won't collide with them any more frequently than you collide with ordinary-looking cars.

For another example, ordinary buildings can look like ancient fortresses or even-more-ancient "cyclopean"-style structures (made from enormous stone blocks). Or every 4th one might look like a fairyland castle.

And so on. Could this be the "killer app" that encourages everyone to wear VR goggles?