Make sense of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality

  • 4 minutes

One of the central questions that new mixed reality learners always ask is, "What's the difference between augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed realty?" Before you dive dictionary definitions, watch the following video and see if your mental model starts to line up with this new paradigm:

Now that you understand the basics, let's define augmented reality on a more granular level:

Any technology that creates a composite viewing experience by superimposing a computer-generated image over a user's view of the real world.

Augmented reality experiences aren't limited to visual additions to your world. You can create augmented experiences that are only audio additions to your physical world, or both audio and visual.

Photograph of a user interacting with holographic content over a physical table.

Augmented reality experiences aren't limited to headsets like HoloLens. Today, millions of mobile devices have depth-sensing capabilities to augment the real world with digital information.

Animated photograph of two users playing an augmented reality game on a physical surface together from their phones.

On the other side of the spectrum, virtual reality is defined as:

Any technology or experience that absolutely immerses a user into a virtual world through the use of a headset, effectively severing their connection to the sights and sounds of the real world.

Virtual reality applications are great for training and for simulations where users would benefit from total immersion to replicate the real-life situation. Examples include training for firefighters, training for emergency-room healthcare providers, and flight simulations.

Photograph of a user wearing an immersive headset and holding a motion controller.

The next logical question you're probably asking is: "With all these choices, how do I decide which part of the mixed reality spectrum I start developing a mixed reality application on? Would my application be better in augmented reality or virtual reality?" Watch this a video to address just that scenario:

You also may hear other terms used for augmented or virtual reality such as spatial computing and extended reality, known as XR. These are usually used as a catch all for everything related to the spectrum between augmented and virtual reality.