This is how mixed reality works, the new bet of VR glasses like Quest 3 to revitalize the market

Mixed reality is a very powerful and interesting technology that will be implemented by both Meta Quest 3 from Meta (Mark Zuckerberg’s company that owns Instagram and Facebook) and Apple’s Apple Vision Pro. Roughly speaking, mixed reality is somewhere between virtual and augmented reality, since it manages to unify the two worlds – physical and virtual – into one to get more out of certain applications intended for the consumption of audiovisual pieces and video games.

Before going on to detail what mixed reality consists of, it is essential to briefly review the concepts of virtual reality and augmented reality. Virtual reality is one that allows the user plunge headlong into a digital world that distances it as far as possible from the real world, which means that this type of technology prevents the user from seeing or hearing the physical environment around them as much as possible. This technology allows an enormous level of immersion – increasingly greater as it is investigated in depth – both visually – we can freely move our head to see the virtual environment in detail – and sound and can be found, for example, in the Sony PlayStation VR 2.

On the other hand, augmented reality does not seek to fully immerse us in a virtual world generated entirely by a computer, but rather it benefits from the physical environment to implement digital objects. In other words, in augmented reality we perceive the elements that surround us through our senses normally, but different elements are added to the environment that, in reality, are not there. A very clear example can be found in Pokemon GO and in Monster Hunter Nowtwo augmented reality games developed by Niantic Labs.

A revolution at the level of smartphones?

Some large companies in the computing, entertainment and technology industries such as Microsoft have not hesitated to affirm that Mixed reality could be a revolution on par with personal computers and smart mobile phones. Not in vain, we are talking about a technology that goes far beyond the limited experiences that we can live in front of a screen by allowing us to interact with various virtual elements using the physical environment of real life as a basis.

Therefore, mixed reality could be defined as a mixture or clash between the real universe that surrounds us and a completely digital universe that gives rise to increasingly intuitive and natural interactions between people, the environment around them and equipment. For mixed reality to take effect, it is essential that technologies be developed capable of understanding the real environment that surrounds them to implement digital elements, in addition to others that can track the movement of our hands, eyes and voice almost to the millimeter.

As you can imagine, over the years there have been numerous advances in sensors that They allow us to accurately capture the position of human bodies in the physical world and detect the distances and positions at which different objects and surfaces are located.. According to an article from Microsoft itself, as a person moves through the physical environment, their movements “are mapped into a digital reality”; Naturally, mixed reality also considers physical limits, since these influence his experiences.

Application of mixed reality in video games

As we said, mixed reality has many applications in various fields, both in terms of education, work and entertainment. In the case of video games, mixed reality can open up a spectacular range of possibilities by allowing players to interact with digital elements integrated into the real world. Even though the Meta Quest 3 will go on sale with a catalog of more than 500 titles and applications already available in Meta Quest and Meta Quest 2In addition to the fact that this content offering will be expanded in December with an Xbox Game Pass application, it remains to be seen to what extent video game companies will bet on mixed reality.