Augmented vs Mixed Reality: not the same

(This post is a response to my good friend, Cam Stevens 's question posed in his post and to the many comments it elicited - please check the original post/thread for context)

Cam: I think this is an important question but not for the reasons most people would think. "Conceptually", it *shouldn't* matter how you mix 'digital' and 'physical' as long as the outcome is technically identical...but we are not there yet, and possibly won't be there for quite some time. So, bravely/foolishly but respectfully, 'taking on' the doyens of the industry, Louis Rosenberg and Avi Bar-Zeev (not to mention Philipp A. Rauschnabel 's work) I posit that AR & MR are quite different.

1. First I want to acknowledge that a lot of the terminology in our industry is like quicksand and a 'marketing' seeps into/drives the conversation frequently (see Avi's point on the HL and MR)

2. A good 'AR vs MR' definition should be mutually exclusive but collectively exhaustive. However, I consider this a practical conversation for the - perhaps - next five years, so I'll be the first to admit that this is more of a 'distinction' than a 'definition'. Having said that:

3. AR (devices) are light(er) weight, narrow(er) FoV, preserve peripheral vision, natively hands-free (i.e. no controller) and in the battery life/performance balancing act they skew towards battery life. They are preferred where peripheral vision is important and will be the exclusive choice for use cases where maintaining visibility in case of a catastrophic device failure is a requirement (e.g. medical procedures, fast-moving industrial environments, or dangerous situations like EMS) Also, eventual social acceptance will weight heavier in their success.

4. You can further complicate?/detail? above if you distinguish between aR and AR (assisted/Augmented) but the general distinction still holds.

5. MR (devices) are 'less mobile' (ie. heavier), provide 2-3x FoV, come w. controllers and/or room setup and optimize for performance/visual fidelity ('more engaging'?) Catastrophic device failure is inconvenient but will not pose an imminent danger to the wearer or its environment.

Equally importantly, the next 5 years will amplify the difference in the above attributes: AR devices will continue to shrink (faster than MR), optimizing for extended wearability at a comparatively lower feature level (e.g. think(the now defunct) North or Engo Eyewear powered by Activelook on the AR side) and MR will continue to gain "metabolically costly" features. Oversimplifying it: AR will get closer to the ideal form factor of 'plain glasses' while MR will continue to beef up performance ... not even attempting social acceptance. Just check out, for example, Qualcomm's roadmap introduced at their recent Snapdragon Summit, forking their SoC platform development into the newly announced AR2 Gen 1chip and the continuation of the (misnomer, in light of the above) XR# platform.