How to tell your one reality from the other

Understanding virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality isn’t easy.

Microsoft HoloLens 2 mixed reality viewer

Understanding virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality isn’t easy.

Virtual reality is the easiest to understand because you are entirely cut off from the world around you. You put on a VR headset, and you are somewhere else. You can look around and move around, and meet other virtual objects, including people represented as avatars. You could be sitting in a virtual Spanish class next to avatars of other students from all around the world.

In gaming, instead of looking at game play on a display in front of you, you are immersed in the game play. You can look around, and use hand controllers to manipulate objects in that virtual world.

VR gaming is a clearly defined market with Oculus, HTC and Sony big players. Sony PlayStation VR has become a big part of Sony’s gaming business which last year reportedly posted about $US7bn revenue.

Augmented reality is when you place imaginary objects in the real world. AR can be accessed not only with headsets but phones and tablets. You can superimpose holograms of furniture from the Ikea catalogue in your lounge room, or use a virtual tape measure on your phone to measure real world items.

The most widely experienced example is the game Pokemon Go which was downloaded more than 500 million times in 2016, the year it was released. Users can create and train 460 species of Pokemon avatars but they appear in the real world.

Mixed reality takes augmented reality further by introducing interactivity between virtual objects and their real world. When using HoloLens, a virtual Hummingbird flew onto my hand when I put my palm out in front of me. That’s a mixed reality experience - the real and imaginary interact.

If I use HoloLens simply to look at holographic labels on boxes, you could class that more as an augmented reality experience.

It’s the degree of interactivity that distinguishes mixed from augmented reality. For example, imagine putting on a headset and being able to create entire models with Lego blocks. If you can move the Lego blocks around and into position, this would be a mixed reality experience.