Mixed Reality is a trending word nowadays especially after Microsoft released it’s own Mixed Reality headset HoloLens. But there is a blurry definition about the term.You might be also having a confusion with what is VR, AR or MR. If it is, allow me to help you in explaining what actually these realities are.
Let’s first get familiar with the term “Extended Reality(XR)”.
XR is a term which encompasses or we can say it is an umbrella of Virtual Reality(VR), Augmented Reality(AR) and Mixed Reality(MR). To understand more of XR let’s see about The Reality Virtuality Continuum which was introduced by Paul Milgram.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality%E2%80%93virtuality_continuum)
It is a continuous scale ranging from completely real reality to completely virtual virtuality and encompasses all possible variations of real and virtual objects. To read more about The Reality Virtuality Continuum, you can refer to this Wikipedia page or directly to this paper by Paul Milgram and fellow authors.
Coming to the topic of realities, let’s refer to the following picture and know more about VR, AR and MR.
Augmented Reality 
Virtual Reality 
Mixed Reality
First things first: All of these realities(VR, AR, MR), come under the single umbrella Extended Reality! Some might refer it as XR where ‘X’ being the variable for all of them!
- Augmented Reality (AR) : In Augmented Reality, we have real world around us, not occluded away from it and we can display digital objects (or some might say 3D models) on top of the view.
In the example above, the first gif tells us more about AR, which is from Target, where the user can place a virtual chair, place it in space, scale accordingly and take a guess if that’s how he wants the chair to be placed or how would it look when the user has the similar real chair there. Other examples of AR can be Pokemon Go, Google Maps AR, Google Lens , some of them by Google here and many other applications for fashion, online shopping, education and what not. - Virtual Reality (VR) : Next is Virtual Reality, where it is a bit different from AR, it’s more of a simulated experience where you get transferred to another world or say you get immersed into a virtual world. Yes, you can’t see the real world around you, but you can experience a whole different and a great world 😉.
In the example above, the second gif, it’s an example of a game Beat Saber, which is a great game, I didn’t got the chance to try it out yet, but I have seen many videos on YouTube of the same and it feels really attractive. There are tons of examples for VR out there.
- Mixed Reality (MR) : Then there’s Mixed Reality! Referring to the spectrum above(The Reality Virtuality Continuum), MR can be said as the best of the both realities VR and AR.
Mixed Reality can also be said as a superset of VR and AR i.e. when you want to refer to both VR and AR and best of both, you can use the term MR. So, VR is MR and AR is also MR!
In the example above, the third gif, you can see a virtual robot walking in real world, being completely aware of the real world around, and at the same time you can see some things trying to pop in! Just add an imagination to this example of making two virtual robots(holograms) fighting with each other in the real world, being completely aware of the walls, tables, chairs, etc around them. Another great example can be, consider a virtual ball rolling across the table and then falling of from the edge and then bouncing down the floor and then finally coming to rest on floor.
As mentioned earlier in the blog, the term Mixed Reality took a sharp curve upward after Microsoft’s own Mixed Reality device HoloLens was released. I will write more about HoloLens in my upcoming blog, so stay tuned!
Update – here’s the blog that speaks more about HoloLens and my experience with it. Do check out! [)-)
Faizan Akhtar Blogs 