What Are the Differences Among Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality?

   By Qingyang Li

     
     Have you guys ever seen this photo? Actually, it is still from a Magic leap demo video, and Magic leap is the company who is received $ 500 million in financing from Google, most of people call them MR company. And you probably heard the name of VR, AR and MR, do you know what their differences?
     For VR,I am not going to mainly talked about it, most people have already known what is it.It's common in Video game field now. The equipment of  VR which are Oculus and HTV Vive, this technology has been used by Play station and some of the game company to create games that can be shown by VR, mostly are horror games like Biohazard to make people feel the certain circumstance.

     For AR, which is augmented reality is similar to VR in that it is often delivered through a sensor-packed wearable device, such as Google Glass, the Daqri Smart Helmet or Epson’s Moverio brand of smart glasses.The whole point of that word, augmented, is that AR takes your view of the real world and adds digital information and/or data on top of it. This might be as simple as numbers or text notifications, or as complex as a simulated screen, something ODG is experimenting with on its forthcoming consumer smart glasses. But in general, AR lets you see both synthetic light as well as natural light bouncing off objects in the real world. AR makes it possible to get that sort of digital information without checking another device, leaving both of the user’s hands free for other tasks. That makes the current technology a natural fit for the enterprise, where a corporation in the energy field, for example, might want to give field workers who are inspecting equipment glasses that can take pictures of and deliver information about what they’re seeing from atop a wind turbine.

                               Pokémon Go is an AR game !

     For MR, it is the least-well-known right now, because this technology is not mature so far but it ironically might have the easiest road to mainstream consumer adoption — if the tech works as advertised. The key term for mixed reality, or MR, is flexibility. It tries to combine the best aspects of both VR and AR, In theory, mixed reality lets the user see the real world (like AR) while also seeing believable, virtual objects (like VR). And then it anchors those virtual objects to a point in real space, making it possible to treat them as "real," at least from the perspective of the person who can see the MR experience. With mixed reality, the illusion is harder to break. To borrow an example from Microsoft’s presentation at the gaming trade show E3, you might be looking at an ordinary table, but see an interactive virtual world from the video game Minecraft sitting on top of it. As you walk around, the virtual landscape holds its position, and when you lean in close, it gets closer in the way a real object would. Unfortunately, Magic leap is a high-secrecy but high-profile company and has yet to publicly reveal a portable, consumer-ready version of its MR technology. Looks like we still need to take a while to see its true colors.

Click here to see the E3 Minecraft video