The tech industry is producing new prototypes of display devices almost every week. New VR headsets, new AR devices, new MR headsets. As the media cover them on a daily basis, the public at large is starting to get acquainted with the terms virtual, augmented and mixed reality. But when asked to tell the difference between them, that’s often confusing for most people.
Lifeliqe has always been all about innovation: exploring new possibilities, crossing boundaries and creating exceptional solutions for education. Within a year, we mastered augmented, virtual and now even the mixed reality and launched our content on all of these platforms. And we didn’t do this just for show, everything we created is being used in classrooms, exciting students and sparking lightbulb moments.
So why don’t we take some time to really learn the differences and see how each of these technologies can be used for learning?
While virtual reality is a concept that is well known to virtually (bad pun intended) everyone. Telling the difference between augmented and mixed reality is where most people struggle.
Mixed reality is similar to augmented in that it works with the natural, visible environment while adding virtual information. But the nature of the information is more complex. Mixed reality devices (such as HoloLens) use the advanced technology of sensors and cameras to anchor virtual objects into the real world, allowing the users to see them as ‘real’.
Mixed reality is basically combining the best of both concepts previously described – high quality, life-like virtual 3D objects and the ability to see them in the real world. This is also a perfect mixture for education, don’t you think? That’s why we recently launched our pilot content on HoloLens as well.
Let’s wrap it up with virtual reality. Of the three concepts, it has received the most attention and OEM’s are racing to win the race for adoption (see what our CEO thinks about that). Basically, virtual reality allows us to immerse ourselves into a three-dimensional interactive experience generated by a computer wearing a head mounted display. The benefits for education are obvious – the student is fully engaged by the content and there’s no worry anymore about engaging students. Our Lifeliqe VR Museum is a great example how it can be utilized in the classroom – read more in the article published by EdSource.
Hopefully, that helped clear things up.