Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality — What You Need to Know
These experiences are starting to make waves in the Tech world, but what exactly are they and how are they different?
Over the past decade, you may have familiarized yourself with the term Virtual Reality (VR) as it’s come into the mainstream. Headsets like the Oculus and HTC Vive became popularized in the Gaming industry, and nowadays there are Sandbox VR locations across the U.S. providing friend groups a collaborative immersive experience. However, it is not the only perception-altering technology out there — Extended Reality (XR) encompasses VR as well as Augmented and Mixed Reality.
Virtual Reality is the most immersive experience of the three — as the system supersedes your physical environment, meaning your surroundings are 100% virtual and simulated. In one moment you are in your living room and the next you could be floating in outer space or in a dystopian world fighting the zombie apocalypse. Some VR headsets require handheld controllers for motion-tracking and user-interface navigation, while others have built-in hand tracking. These 3D experiences can also be leveraged without a headset. Examples of this includes 3D virtual tours for houses and apartments on Zillow that can be accessed from your mobile device or computer.
On the other end of the spectrum we have Augmented Reality (AR) which, unlike VR, does not completely remove you from your physical environment but superimposes holograms over it instead. Ultimately, you can still see your real environment while also having the ability to interact with digital elements. Pokémon GO is a popular application of mobile Augmented Reality that took the world by storm in 2016, with 500 million downloads worldwide within the first 2 months of its release. In this application, users could pretend they were Pokémon trainers and wander around any indoor and outdoor location in hopes of finding and capturing new characters. Pokémon could be found in your very own backyard or in the hallways of your school. Other common examples of mobile AR includes Snapchat and Tiktok filters that overlay graphics over your face or physical environment. Google Maps also includes a feature that provides real-time navigation in AR with holographic pointers to direct you to your destination.
Augmented Reality has become even more advanced with the introduction of headsets like the Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, and now the new Apple VisionPro. With these heads-up displays, you can be watching your favorite TV show while also cooking dinner, meeting with a long-distance friend as if they were sitting right there in your room, or designing the interior elements of your new home by placing digital 3D life-sized furniture right in your space wherever you see fit. One important thing to note about Augmented Reality is that it does not necessarily matter what physical location you are in — the holographic output has no ‘context’ of your environment. Let’s discuss how Mixed Reality enhances this experience with spatial detection and object recognition.
So in VR we are fully immersed in a virtual simulation, in AR we can see our real world but only interact with virtual elements, is there a way where these virtual elements can interact with us and our physical world?
Introducing Mixed Reality (MR), which is the best of both the digital and physical worlds. MR leverages spatial awareness, hand-tracking, eye-tracking, object detection, and more to enhance our interactions with the real-world. This technology has the capabilities to track what we are interacting with and how we are interacting with it to provide an enhanced reality. Imagine you are assembling a piece of furniture and your MR interface is helping you detect which parts and tools you need to use out of all the pieces scattered before you and where to connect them step-by-step as you go. At the store, the system can see what items you are looking at or holding and provide information like customer reviews, price ranges, and similar products you may also be interested in — maybe it knows what items are on your shopping list and can help you find them faster. This intelligence provides a whole new level to Augmented Reality where the system is now aiding us in our everyday lives.
This is only a brief introduction to the capabilities of these three XR experiences, yet the possibilities are endless and will be pivotal in our everyday lives over the coming years.
