The age of virtual realty is here but augmented reality and its cousin mixed reality are making strides. WIRED senior editor Peter Rubin breaks down the new platforms.

Immersive and instinctive computing has the power to transform all of our lives. This is what drives us to create technologies that help solve some of the world’s toughest challenges.

Since 1992, NASA had been using a technology for replicating space on earth at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to train astronauts for spacewalks. Even the defence sector had been leveraging the same technology in ‘flight or battlefield simulations’ and ‘virtual bootcamp’ to create real-life experiences without actual danger to a soldier’s life. No matter how applicable augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) might have been in the past; but today, various industries are incorporating AR and VR into their regular products and services to enhance customer experience. For more details check: www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/how-augmented-reality-virtual-reality-is-transforming-lives/ar-AAp1ozK

Augmented Reality (AR) as a real-time direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment that has been enhanced/augmented by adding virtual computer-generated information to it. The first appearance of Augmented Reality (AR) dates back to the 1950s when Morton Heilig, a cinematographer, thought of cinema is an activity that would have the ability to draw the viewer into the onscreen activity by taking in all the senses in an effective manner. In 1968, Sutherland was the first one to create an augmented reality system using an optical see-through head-mounted display.