And, Suddenly, there was Mixed Reality
Do you remember the excitement back to 2021…
At any moment, both Apple and Meta were poised to launch full-blown AR headsets for the consumer market, Samsung teased a compelling AR glasses video, Snap was actually starting to ship an AR device, (albeit only for developers), and even Niantic was said to be working on glasses of their own.
Fast forward a year later, and the picture has drastically changed. Meta has mothballed its most ambitious AR device, ‘project Nazere’, while Apple’s device, (with the cryptic codename N421), is still stuck somewhere in the dark depths of the rumor mill. The year passed with only a few secondary products landing in the AR consumer market.
But, the void created by the waning of AR has been filled by the sudden rise of Mixed Reality. This may seem surprising, since MR, after all, is nothing more than a VR headset with eyes, or, more precisely, with the addition of a passthrough camera that allows users to view their physical surroundings.
The addition of a passthrough camera may not, at first blush, sound that revolutionary, but it can transform the disorienting, uncomfortable experience of VR into something much more palatable for the average person.
We all have a basic human instinct to check our surroundings — it is hard wired into our systems to ensure our safety. When we use VR, we can’t do this, and this makes for a very uncomfortable sensation. With MR, the discomfort is reduced, and we can remain in VR longer, and with less aversion.
If this holds true, VR may finally start to move from being almost exclusively a gaming platform to being a full blown general purpose device, with uses in social, productivity, commerce and collaboration — in other words, the metaverse.
The rush to MR is picking up momentum. In the past month, Apple has been reported to demonstrate such a device to its board of directors, and avid Apple watchers are now predicting that the device, codenamed N301, will be released in early 2023.
In the meantime, Meta has brought its MR offering, codenamed Cambria, to the forefront, with Mark Zuckerberg posting a video of himself using Cambria, and featuring the passthrough camera and its ‘presence’ capabilities. The always reliable rumor mill expects the Cambria to hit the market as early as September of 2022.
There are a few MR headsets already on the market. Most notably, Helsinki based Varjo has the XR-3. It is bulky, tethered to a huge base station, and is awesomely expensive. But, it delivers an eye-popping display and a high resolution passthrough camera with low distortion. Despite its price and other limitations, the Varjo product has been met with great enthusiasm in the enterprise and pro-sumer markets.
Within mixed reality, virtual objects can be indistinguishable from real ones, which makes the immersive experience much more convincing. The quality will not be as good as the naked eye, but everything is on equal footing. In this sense, MR is superior to anything that AR will be able to deliver in the next few years.
It is important to remember that mixed reality is not a substitute for what AR can ultimately deliver. Its use will be limited to indoor, non-mobile applications, and it does not allow interaction of people within MR to those outside of it. And, it is still a lot of hardware to wear on your head.
The full experience of immersive technology will not be realized until AR emerges from hibernation and moves, once again, to the forefront.
