Virtual, augmented and mixed reality: what’s the difference?

You're sure to have heard of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) -technologies that are hot topics at the moment. All the major players are in on the craze: Microsoft with HoloLens, Google with Google Glass, and now Apple has introduced ARKit for developers. And this should come as no surprise because there's lots of potential hiding in VR, AR and MR. But what's the difference between them, exactly?

Virtual reality versus augmented and mixed reality

The extent to which reality is replaced by virtual elements is a useful benchmark in distinguishing the three technologies from each other. And this makes virtual reality the clearest to distinguish from the other two. As the name suggests, with virtual reality, the world around you is fully digital. If you dive into virtual reality with the specially developed headsets - such as Oculus Rift or HTC Vive - then everything you see is virtual. With augmented reality and mixed reality, you still see the real world around you, but with virtual elements added. So your world is 'improved' (augmented) or 'blended' (mixed) with digital aspects, but the virtualisation of reality is not 100%, with AR and MR.

Augmented reality versus mixed reality

Whereas VR is easy to distinguish from AR and MR, the difference between the latter two is less obvious, because both add virtual elements to the real world. Think of the Pokémon Go craze, for example, which enables you to project virtual monsters in the real world through your smartphone screen.

So where is the distinction? It's not really clear cut, but the difference comes in the extent to which the digital elements are embedded in the world around you, and how much you can manipulate them. With augmented reality, you place a virtual layer over the real world, which is separate from the reality. What you do in the real world has no influence on the virtual.

With mixed reality, the virtual is blended - mixed - with the real world. Let's take the example of Pokémon Go again: when you encounter a monster, you need to point your camera towards the place where the Pokémon is. If you walk away from that place, or turn your camera away, the little monster disappears from your screen, because it's embedded in that one place in the real world. With AR, the Pokémon would simply move together with your screen. But because the separating line between AR and MR is paper thin, the two terms are often used interchangeably.

The difference in examples

Because the three realities differ from each other, they each have their own applications, which we're coming across more and more in our day-to-day lives, at work and at home. Even though the main focus is currently on augmented and mixed reality applications, there are also lots of possibilities for virtual reality, for example in the real estate sector: customers can visit a virtual version of their future home from their chair. Or you can go on a journey to the other side of the world from your living room by putting on a VR headset with Google Earth VR.

The #LiveForNow campaign from Pepsi Max is a good example of augmented reality, where a bus stop was fitted with a screen and a camera. People who sat in the bus stop and looked through the glass window could suddenly see a tiger running past or aliens abducting people. Be sure to have a look at it here.

Mixed reality is also a very useful technology for steering production environments in the right direction. At the Mariasteen sheltered workshop, for example, instructions are displayed on the workbench via projectors - it doesn't always need to be glasses or a headset. The devices recognise the employees' actions and provide feedback or move on to the next stage. This means the employees, who often need extra supervision, can perform tasks successfully that they otherwise couldn't. The project is positioned somewhere in the middle between AR and MR, but because employees can carry out the virtual instructions using hand gestures, it's closer to our definition of mixed reality.