Mixed reality
Mixed reality presents physical and virtual objects together in a single view, and in current use the name is kept for systems whose digital content recognizes the surfaces and objects of the room and hides behind them. Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino introduced the term in 1994 for everything between a fully physical environment and a fully virtual one.
Fyware's XR glossary, with the source behind each definition.
Mixed reality presents physical and virtual objects together in a single view, and in current use the name is kept for systems whose digital content recognizes the surfaces and objects of the room and hides behind them. Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino introduced the term in 1994 for everything between a fully physical environment and a fully virtual one.
Ask two vendors what mixed reality means and the answers may not match. Reviewing the term in 2021, Richard Skarbez, Missie Smith and Mary Whitton found it used as a combination of augmented and virtual reality, as a synonym for augmented reality, as a stronger version of it and in its original 1994 sense. The most common shorthand, they write, is that a mixed reality system knows things about the physical world and an augmented reality system does not.
The 1994 sense is broader. Milgram and Kishino ordered displays along a continuum, from environments made only of physical objects to environments made only of virtual ones, such as a computer simulation, and whatever presents both together falls in between. Augmented reality is one stretch of it, and augmented virtuality, a generated world with video of the physical one added, is its inverse. The 2021 review adds that not even virtual reality reaches the virtual end: a display could render a spacewalk perfectly and the wearer would still know which way is down, with both feet on the floor.
Both ways of building it already appear among the display classes of the 1994 paper. One lets the wearer see the room directly through a see-through display that overlays the image, the family HoloLens belongs to. The other shows the room as video: cameras on the front of the headset capture it and display it on closed screens together with the virtual content, which headset makers now call passthrough and the paper called video see-through. Meta presented the Meta Quest 3 in September 2023 as its mixed reality headset, with full-color passthrough that, by Meta’s count, has more than ten times the pixels of the Quest 2; a double tap on the side switches the same headset between full immersion and a view blended with the room.
On a plant floor, a system that knows the physical world shows it in small ways: the digital object rests on the table without floating above it and disappears behind a person who walks in front of it. The deciding question is whether the digital content has to coexist with the surroundings that way or only appear over them. Testing where a robot arm fits between machines, or practicing with fire on the floor of the bay, needs the first, with the hands free. Showing a model on a table is solved with augmented reality on a tablet, which is cheaper to buy and to manage than a mixed reality headset.
One clarification, because search results mix them up. The Mixed Reality Portal is a Windows app for the headsets of the Windows Mixed Reality platform, which Microsoft deprecated in December 2023 and announced it would remove in Windows 11, version 24H2. Mixed Reality Link is a newer, separate Windows 11 app that connects a Meta Quest 3 or 3S to a PC and shows its desktop as virtual monitors.
For an Austrian industrial augmented reality company, published unnamed, Fyware built a configurable digital twin of robot arms in mixed reality on HoloLens 2 between 2023 and 2024. In the interface the user picks from two to six axes and types the length of each link in centimeters; the arm appears at 1:1 scale on the floor where the cell would go, anchored to a tape marker with the room’s spatial mesh in view, and the end effector is moved by hand to a cone that marks the target. Commissioning on the physical cell did not happen, because the client entered insolvency in September 2024. Mixed reality has been with Fyware since its first project in 2017: an event staging tool at 1:1 scale, on the first mixed reality headset on the market, for an audiovisual and event production provider operating inside hotel chains.
«real world and virtual world objects are presented together within a single display»
This is the paper that introduces the continuum between the physical and the virtual and calls mixed reality any joint presentation of physical and virtual objects; among its display classes it already separates optical see-through from video see-through.
«MR systems possess knowledge about the physical world, while AR systems do not»
Revisiting the continuum in 2021, the authors record that the term is used in several ways and that the most common shorthand is that mixed reality knows the physical world.
«full-color Passthrough keeps your physical surroundings in sight with over 10 times more pixels [...]»
Meta presented the Quest 3 as a mixed reality headset with full-color passthrough and more than ten times the pixels of the Quest 2; the figure is the manufacturer’s.
«Windows Mixed Reality is deprecated and will be removed in Windows 11, version 24H2.»
The Mixed Reality Portal belongs to the Windows Mixed Reality platform, which Microsoft deprecated in December 2023; its devices keep working with Steam on Windows 11, version 23H2, through November 2026.
Headsets that see the room, in two families. Optical see-through headsets such as HoloLens 2 let the wearer look at the room through a transparent display that overlays the image; video headsets such as the Meta Quest 3 capture the room with cameras and show it together with the virtual content, which is passthrough. Milgram and Kishino already separated the two variants in 1994.
Both. Meta presented it in September 2023 as its mixed reality headset, with full-color passthrough, and a double tap on the side switches it between full immersion and a blend with the room. Fyware uses it that way at its mixed reality fire extinguisher station: the headset scans the area and places the fire on the floor, so the person keeps seeing the plant while choosing the extinguisher and discharging it.
It is a Microsoft app for Windows 11 that connects a Meta Quest 3 or 3S to a PC and shows the desktop as virtual monitors inside the headset, generally available since October 30, 2025, according to Microsoft. It is a separate product from the older Mixed Reality Portal, part of the Windows Mixed Reality platform that Microsoft deprecated in December 2023, whose headsets keep working with Steam on Windows 11, version 23H2, through November 2026. It is needed only to bring a Windows desktop into the headset; training simulators such as Fyware Safe run inside the Quest 3 with no PC.
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