SOLVED: Whats The Difference Between Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality?

We have some good articles on virtual reality and augmented reality, but something that people are consistently confused by is the difference between augmented reality and mixed reality. Put simply, mixed reality is simply augmented reality that you can interact with.

Both mixed reality and augmented reality require some sort of headset or glasses to project information onto so that it can be added to (augmenting) what you were looking at.

However, with mixed reality you would be able to touch or move those augmentations.

For instance, imagine that you are wearing augmented reality glasses that display core information about all of the businesses within your scope of vision. Now imagine that one of them is a restaurant and so you reach your hand up to wear that restaurant name is and tap on the little overlay (augmentation) with the name in it, to have it expand to provide details like, the menu, phone number, recent reviews…

In the graphic above the woman is using augmented reality glasses and as decided to explore the clothing store by reaching her hand up and tapping it. Perhaps she wants to find out the hours that the store is open or what product lines they carry or she wants to text of a message or check their inventory to find out if they have something in her size. That is mixed reality.