Augmented virtuality

Mixed reality (MR) is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Mixed reality takes place not only in the physical world or the virtual world, but is a hybrid of reality and virtual reality, encompassing both augmented reality and augmented virtuality via immersive technology. The first immersive mixed reality system, providing enveloping sight, sound, and touch was the Virtual Fixtures platform developed at the U.S. Air Force's Armstrong Laboratories in the early 1990s. In a study published in 1992, the Virtual Fixtures project at the U.S. Air Force demonstrated for the first time that human performance could be significantly amplified by the introduction of spatially registered virtual objects overlaid on top of a person's direct view of a real physical environment.'The conventionally held view of a Virtual Reality (VR) environment is one in which the participant-observer is immersed in, and able to interact with, a completely synthetic world. Such a world may mimic the properties of some real-world environments, either existing or fictional; however, it can also exceed the bounds of physical reality by creating a world in which the physical laws ordinarily governing space, time, mechanics, material properties, etc. no longer hold. What may be overlooked in this view, however, is that the VR label is also frequently used in association with a variety of other environments, to which total immersion and complete synthesis do not necessarily pertain, but which fall somewhere along a virtuality continuum. In this paper, we focus on a particular subclass of VR related technologies that involve the merging of real and virtual worlds, which we refer to generically as Mixed Reality (MR).'Cave Automatic Virtual EnvironmentHead-up displayHead-mounted displayTablet PCComputer displayPersonal Digital AssistantMobile phonesHandheld PC Mixed reality (MR) is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Mixed reality takes place not only in the physical world or the virtual world, but is a hybrid of reality and virtual reality, encompassing both augmented reality and augmented virtuality via immersive technology. The first immersive mixed reality system, providing enveloping sight, sound, and touch was the Virtual Fixtures platform developed at the U.S. Air Force's Armstrong Laboratories in the early 1990s. In a study published in 1992, the Virtual Fixtures project at the U.S. Air Force demonstrated for the first time that human performance could be significantly amplified by the introduction of spatially registered virtual objects overlaid on top of a person's direct view of a real physical environment.