Which technology will prevail: VR, MR or AR?
A MIXED reader asked us a common question. Which technology is the future: VR, MR or AR? Here is our answer.
Every Monday, we answer a question from our readers. Send your question to tomislav@mixed.de with "Question" in the subject line, and with any luck, we'll answer it the following Monday.
This week's question comes from our reader Lorenz:
What is the future: VR, MR or AR?
Hello Lorenz,
That's a question we get asked a lot. To answer it, I would first like to define the terms:
- Virtual Reality: You wear a headset or glasses and see only a virtual environment displayed on opaque screens, you can't see the real world.
- Mixed Reality: You wear a headset or glasses and see a mix of virtual and physical elements on opaque screens, with the real world displayed using passthrough.
- Augmented Reality: You wear a headset or glasses with transparent optics (plastic, glass, silicon carbide) and see the real world overlaid with context-sensitive digital elements or holograms.
My answer to your question is that none of these technologies is THE future. VR, MR, and AR represent different types of face computers that will coexist in various hybrids and form factors, some even without displays like the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.
If the tech industry is successful in bringing full-blown AR glasses to market that people will want to wear in public, this type of face computer is likely to be the most successful, as it is more suitable for all-day use and potentially has many practical applications.
However, this does not mean that VR and MR headsets will disappear. Due to their larger form factor, i.e. the ability to accommodate significantly more technology, they have their own advantages and use cases that AR glasses cannot fulfill or fulfill less well.
However, I expect that pure VR devices will become increasingly rare and replaced by MR-enabled headsets and glasses that support both VR and MR. And in between, there will be many other types of face computers that we don't know about yet.
Kind regards,
Tomislav
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