VR, or virtual reality, is a divergence from reality. Completely engaging in a digital environment, it replaces its surroundings by the user’s side. When you put a VR headset like an Oculus Quest or HTC Vive on your head, you are entering a whole new world, a fantastic gaming load transporting to a historical landmark or a futuristic training simulation.

Then the defining part of VR: immersion. It makes you feel like you are inside the digital world with all your senses. Your arms and legs can be used as controllers to manipulate virtual objects. A headset shuts out all light and sound from the real world.

• Complete Immersion: In this user experience, the subject shall be isolated from the real world. 
• Headset Required: VR experiences usually require a dedicated headset to have almost seamless experiences. 
• Controlled Environment: The user sees nothing except the digital worlds. 

• Gaming: You enter into the Beat Saber environment where you slash blocks to the rhythm of the music, feeling the adrenaline rush of an intense chase through fast-paced neon lights.
• Education: Students in medicine can perform virtual surgery while practicing complicated procedures in a risk-free environment.
• Real Estate: A potential home buyer sitting anywhere in the world can take a virtual tour of the property, walking through the rooms as if he or she were really there. 

VR presents so much in terms of training, simulations, and exciting customer experiences. It could change the way you show products and services to users, enabling them to interact in ways that were never possible before. You can read more about the Future of VR to understand where the technology is heading.

Augmented Reality, otherwise known as AR, is placed on the opposite pole from VR on the reality continuum. Instead of obscuring the real world, AR sharpens the focus on it. It projects digital information, pictures, or 3D models right into your reality view. This is mostly experienced through the evolution of smartphone and tablet displays or even through special AR glasses. 

AR does not generate a new environment but merely adds to your present one. The digital entities are tricked into believing that they are “anchored” to your physical environment, but they cannot actually be involved. For instance, an AR object may seem to be on your table, but it could never actually be obscured by a real object that stood behind it; the digital overlay would always be on top. 

• Enhanced Reality: Digital Elements Overlays on Real-world.
• Real-world Context: The user retains complete presence in their physical reality.
• Accessible: While most AR applications can be downloaded on a smartphone itself, this makes it highly scalable technology.

• Retail: The IKEA Place app allows a virtual place to locate furniture in their home to see how it fits before you buy it.
• Social Media: Everyone knows Snapchat and Instagram filters-in-a-form of a virtual mask of dog ears or masks over your face.
• Gaming: The phenomenal Pokémon Go turns the reality into a virtual world using AR, allowing fans to find and catch Pokémon, which strategically locate themselves in the real world.

This is phenomenal as a marketing powerhouse for companies: engaging customers and upping sales; bringing context-based, on-demand interactive content to the consumer experience in real-time. To fully leverage this technology, it’s crucial to understand the pros and cons of augmented reality. This is why we are seeing the Future of Augmented Reality in E-commerce as a major trend.

Mixed Reality, or MR, is the most advanced and complex of the three technologies. Indeed, it is the real fusion of physical and digital worlds, which form a hybrid environment that has real and virtual objects coexisting and actively interacting with one another in real time. MR goes further than AR by having the digital elements understand their physical environment, which facilitates experiences that are truly interactive, where virtual objects can be cast in shadow as they are placed behind or in front of real objects and react as if they existed in reality.

It demands dedicated, powerful hardware such as Microsoft’s HoloLens or Magic Leap headsets, which are transparent to see the real world with the projection of digital objects. This is where magic happens; you reach out and “touch” a virtual object; it can respond to you.

• Interactive Hybrid: Digital and physical worlds are blended fully well.
• Environmental Understanding: Digital objects should understand the feedback of the surrounding environment and also attach to it.
• Specialized Hardware: Advanced headsets with sensors need to map the surroundings of the user.

• Design & Engineering: Architects can walk through a virtual 3D model of a building placed on a physical table, making real-time adjustments.
• Manufacturing: Engineers can see an exploded view of a machine they are working on, with digital instructions and components floating in their field of vision.
• Training & Collaboration: Teams in different geographic locations can interact as if they are in the same room through virtually generated 3D models as they work on a project together.

MR Hardware implies that there is always a huge value in transforming the way a business would operate, collaborate, or train, even when such hardware tends to be expensive.