What is the difference between Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)?

 

VR isn't the real world but instead a simulation that draws the user into virtual relaity.

AR is parts of the real world being overlapped so that you are able to use parts of both unlike MR which is mixed reality rather than an overlap.

MR uses the technology of the digital world to enable it to coincide with the real world.

In Broader terms:

Virtual Reality

VR is the most widely known of these technologies. It is fully immersive, which tricks your senses into thinking you’re in a different environment or world apart from the real world. Using a head-mounted display (HMD) or headset, you’ll experience a computer-generated world of imagery and sounds in which you can manipulate objects and move around using haptic controllers while tethered to a console or PC.

Augmented Reality

AR overlays digital information on real-world elements. Pokémon GO* is among the best-known examples. Augmented reality keeps the real world central but enhances it with other digital details, layering new strata of perception, and supplementing your reality or environment.

Mixed Reality

MR brings together real world and digital elements. In mixed reality, you interact with and manipulate both physical and virtual items and environments, using next-generation sensing and imaging technologies. Mixed Reality allows you to see and immerse yourself in the world around you even as you interact with a virtual environment using your own hands—all without ever removing your headset. It provides the ability to have one foot (or hand) in the real world, and the other in an imaginary place, breaking down basic concepts between real and imaginary, offering an experience that can change the way you game and work today.

In a more Simplified version:

Virtual Reality

A totally immersive experience replacing the “real” world with an alternate one. Interaction with, and movement through, the alternate world via six degrees of freedom is almost always required.

Augmented Reality

Overlaying imagery on an existing space, to be seen through an enabled devices, such as a smartphone or glasses. Interaction is optional, but not required.

Mixed Reality

Placing new imagery within a real space in such a way that the new imagery is able to interact, to an extent, with what is real in the physical world we know.

In conclusion

• Virtual reality replaces your world with a virtual one.
• Augmented reality supplements your world with digital objects of any sort.
• Mixed reality seamlessly integrates digital objects into your world making it look as if they are really there.