Mixed Reality (MRI) – a brief overview of mixed reality

Mixed Reality (MRI) – a brief overview of mixed reality

Of all the different types of augmented reality (XR) available to us today, mixed reality (MRI) often brings with it the most confusion. For years, people interested in the future of digital technology have viewed mixed reality as a kind of additional extension of refined reality (AR). However, mixed reality can provide us with much more than most people realize.

What is mixed reality?

Mixed Reality (MR) combines real and virtual objects to create new virtual environments and visual representations where we can interact with real and virtual objects simultaneously. It’s actually a combination of refined reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Within mixed reality, you can act on virtual objects, but also on real objects that surround you that are simulated in the virtual world. Virtual objects can also interact with real objects.The basis of mri are technologies such as computer vision, graphical data processing, advanced data display technologies and various other virtual technologies that are currently under development.

What does mixed reality look like?

Imagine you’re sitting in your room or office. You’re wearing an MRI hedset. With it, you can interact with digital content, such as a split document that is updated in real time via the cloud, or a digital 3D prototype you’re currently working on that you can experiment with. At the same time, while working with virtual objects, you can see all the physical objects that surround you in the real world like tables and chairs, and you can put digital objects on them. This is just one of the many examples of the use of mixed reality.

With mixed reality, you can access instinctive, organic interactions with digital technology in the virtual world and the real world simultaneously.

Similarity between MRI and AR

Refined Reality (AR) is a digital extension of the real world. With AR, we experience the real world and digital objects inserted into it. The best examples of this would be: a game of Pokemon Go, certain Snapchat filters, or devices like Goggle Glass glasses.

Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive virtual experience that you experience using a VR headset that allows you to interact with the virtual world. VR currently uses complete headsets instead of glasses, giving the user the ability to experience a world in all 360° in which they can move freely.

Mixed reality “simulates” the real world that surrounds you and digitizes real objects. In other words, it recreates them in virtual form. Also, you yourself can be present in digital form, through avatars. So you can collaborate with people who are in another location.

Similar to augmented reality, there are various tools for accessing mixed reality. These include MR hedsets/glasses such as HoloLens, HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap. A quality MR experience is certainly easier to achieve with a hedset, while augmented reality currently relies more on smartphones and their cameras.

What can be done with mixed reality?

The successful achievement of mixed reality is a rather complex process, and therefore this technology is still in the early stages of development. However, the possibilities offered by mri are potentially endless.

Microsoft has shown us with its HoloLens hedset that MRI can be used to create a variety of holographic experiences, allowing people to “show up” in the same rooms as their counterparts even though they are in different, remote places. Mixed realities allow digital objects to interact with the physical world, and humans interact with virtual elements and objects as if they were real. With MR, we can expand and refine all aspects of the real world.

MR technology has recently been expanding its applications in all sectors, for example, education, medicine and many others. Here are some useful mri applications:

Education: MRI makes learning more interesting and interactive via 3D projections and simulations.

Training and training: In terms of using mixed reality training, the MRI has shown a gradual improvement in the learning process by 40% due to providing the ability to visualize the entire process.

Healthcare: When it comes to medicine, MRI helps medical professionals and doctors view and share patient records and data in a much more interactive way, while creating the basis for performing image-guided surgery.

Business sector: MRI significantly reduces the shortcomings of remote work or education. It can also be useful in business meetings because they are developing translation applications that will be able to translate foreign languages in real time. In other words, mixed reality meetings will be a lot more interactive than classic videoconferencing.

How is mixed reality achieved?

Mixed reality depends largely on the development of the relationship between humans and machines. To be effective, MR technology must be able to understand the different actions and movements that the person using it makes. In addition, he must have a good understanding of the space in which the user is located in order to be able to better correlate the movements and behavior of virtual objects with the real space in which the user is located.

When a user puts on glasses or a mixed reality hedset, the cameras and sensors in the device connect to a software program that collects as much information as possible about the space surrounding the user, creating a virtual map of the real world. Using that map, MR technology can project holographic images and virtual content into the real world, i.e. it can insert these virtual content through a virtual version of the real world that it creates by collecting information.

Mixed reality uses a range of cameras, sensors and is often accompanied by artificial intelligence that deals with the processing of space data and the benefit of collected information to create digitally refined experiences.

To function effectively, mri must be able to monitor the boundaries of surfaces of objects and physical locations, body position and movements of users and other persons who may be in the room, and ambient lighting and sound.

What is the mixed reality spectrum?

Perhaps the best way to explain mixed reality is via the mixed reality spectrum. Mixed reality brings together the real and virtual worlds. These two realities signify the two ultimate members of the spectrum known as the continuum of virtuality.

At one end of the continuum we have the real world in which we exist and live. In it, we interact with physical objects and real events.

At the opposite end of the continuum is a fully digital, virtual world created using advanced computer programs and software. That kind of reality doesn’t exist yet. However, the virtual reality we know today is the closest to such a digital, fully virtual reality and thus the virtual end of the continuum. In it, most of the content is virtual, although users continue to be present in the real world while accessing virtual reality. Because of this, virtual reality is not exactly at the end of the spectrum and cannot be called complete virtuality, but it is close enough to be considered the ultimate member and does not count towards the spectrum of mixed reality.

You can read more about virtual reality (VR) here.

Refined reality (AR) reality and refined virtuality (AV) are both on the mixed reality spectrum.

Refined reality is located closer to the real world and most of the content you see and communicate with is real, and a smaller amount of virtual elements is subsequently added to it to make reality virtually refined.

You can read more about refined reality (AR) here.

Refined virtuality is, simply put, an inverted AR. The base of AV is a virtual world in which a smaller amount of real elements was subsequently added in order to refine this virtuality.

Mixed reality is found between AR and AV, right in the middle of the mixed reality spectrum. With MRI, it is possible to create a fully immersive experience in which the boundaries between virtual and real elements are erased and they begin to exist on an equal footing in the same place. Mri allows us to interact simultaneously and equally with virtual and real objects.

What is the future of mixed reality?

As technologies continue to evolve and innovators discover new ways of combining the virtual and physical worlds, the potential of mixed reality becomes greater. Various devices that allow you to manage holographic content are rapidly attracting more and more attention.

In his 2020 research, Microsoft noted that 68% of companies already believe that mixed reality could be an important tool for achieving strategic business goals. About 90% of companies also confirmed that in some ways they are already researching and experimenting with MRI.

Forrester Research believes that more than 14 million workers in the U.S. will use smart glasses by the end of 2025. As long as enterprises push the idea of a future enhanced by refined reality, opportunities in MR will only grow.

Combined with the increasing availability and development of technology to produce lightweight, comfortable and powerful smart glasses and headsets, the emergence of new, improved software in the field of MR could take this type of technology into the future much faster than expected.

The complete experience of mixed reality is still in development. The best ways to bring digital content into the real world are still being sought. However, innovation is happening; Much faster than most people expect. We are fast approaching the point where mixed reality will no longer just be a sci-fi concept, but will become something that will be available in everyday life.