--- title: "Mixed reality (MR): digital objects that answer the room" description: "How PTR uses mixed reality for practice with holographic people and objects in real rooms, with physical equipment and a debrief afterwards." canonical: https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/mixed-reality --- [XR](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr) # Mixed Reality (MR) In mixed reality, digital objects share and respond to a person's physical room in real time. They can rest on real surfaces, disappear behind furniture and remain anchored between sessions. For a fuller explanation of how MR works and where it is used, see [What is mixed reality?](https://peopletechrevolution.com/learn/xr/what-is-mixed-reality) A clinician meets a holographic patient. Key takeaway PTR uses MR for realistic practice that keeps the room, furniture and equipment in play while adding holographic people and objects. PTR builds virtual, augmented and mixed reality for realistic practice. MR uses the same method as its VR work: a safe environment, real pressure, the learner's own choice and a debrief afterwards. A room split between real and digital. One room, two halves ## The room stays, and the digital half has to obey it. The continuum above is a line on a page. In a room it is one person, seeing the desk and the doorway they already know, plus objects that were not there a moment ago and that behave as though the walls apply to them. Everything else follows from that: the mapping that measures the room, the occlusion that lets real furniture hide a digital figure, and the reason a group can keep talking to each other while it happens. Have a case for mixed reality? [Open the contact form](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/mixed-reality#contact) Ask our CEO Simon Lowe’s Digital Twin a question ## The same method, brought into the workplace VR takes the learner into a virtual setting. MR brings the scenario into the workplace: a holographic patient can appear at a real bedside, and learners can rehearse a procedure with real equipment. VR remains PTR's larger body of delivery and accounts for most of its detailed case material. Your room is mapped as a spatial mesh, so the digital half knows where your walls are. Your clinicians address a holographic patient at a real bedside, with the real equipment in reach. Your trainees align a virtual part on the real table it will sit on. ## What the room map makes possible MR builds a working 3D understanding of the room. Digital content can hide behind real furniture, collide with real surfaces or stay fixed to one wall between sessions. That spatial integration usually separates MR headsets and software from simpler AR overlays, although commercial hardware blurs the line and modern standalone headsets increasingly support both MR and AR. Your holographic figure passes behind a real chair, so the scene reads as the room it is in. Your group inspects a panel fixed to one wall, and it is still there next session. Your instrument rests on a real table, seen from inside the headset. ## Practical considerations Mixed reality headsets cost more and are less common than phone AR or standalone VR. Most must map the room to anchor digital objects, raising privacy and consent questions when scanning someone else's space. Occlusion, where a real object hides a virtual one, varies by device and lighting. Room maps can drift or need rescanning when furniture moves. Guidance anchored to the machine itself. A 2019 CHI paper surveying academics and industry experts found six partially competing notions of MR. Researchers do not agree on a single definition. Scope an MR proposal on its own terms rather than as a swap for an existing VR build. To compare MR with virtual and augmented reality directly, see [VR vs AR vs MR: Understanding the Differences](https://peopletechrevolution.com/learn/xr/vr-vs-ar-vs-mr). Talk to us about an MR idea. Runs on - [Meta Quest 3](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/meta-quest-3) - [Apple Vision Pro](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/apple-vision-pro) - [Meta Quest Pro](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/meta-quest-pro) - [Android XR](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/android-xr) - [PICO](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/pico) - [VIVE & Varjo](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/vive-and-varjo) - [Every headset & device](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices) Have a case for mixed reality? [Open the contact form](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/mixed-reality#contact) Ask our CEO Simon Lowe’s Digital Twin a question Related PTR work [XR overview](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr) · [PTR's virtual reality work](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/virtual-reality) · [PTR's augmented reality page](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/augmented-reality) ## Through the headset Inside the headset a holographic instrument rests on the real table and a virtual hand lines up with the bedrail your staff already know. A holographic instrument rests on a table. A virtual hand aligns with a bedrail. ## Ideas anchored in outdoor places Outdoors the anchor is a headland, an orchard row or a sculpture, and your guidance sits on the place itself rather than on a screen. Colour stones across a coastal headland. Colour rings among citrus branches. Colour ribbons around a bronze sculpture. Guide markers rise from beach sand. ## Anchored objects along the coast Your rehabilitation and training markers sit beside the rockpools, the mangroves and the bush track where the work happens. Movement beside bright coastal rockpools. Colour spheres beside the mangroves. Colour steps line a bush track. ## Anchored guidance across farms and museums Your learners see the canopy, the exhibit or the vineyard row with the guidance anchored to it, on the farm or in the gallery. Colour canopies beside a dairy shelter. Translucent waves surround a timber boat. Translucent planes beside harbour water. Colour streams fill vineyard rows. ## Sources and further reading - [A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays](https://globals.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/e77-d_12_1321/_p) - Milgram and Kishino, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, 1994 - [What is Mixed Reality?](https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300767) - Speicher, Hall and Nebeling, ACM CHI 2019 (Best Paper Honorable Mention) - [Spatial mapping](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/design/spatial-mapping) - Microsoft Learn, Mixed Reality documentation