If you've watched any tech conferences in the last few years, one thing is very clear: companies and their communities are excited about augmented/mixed reality.

Apple has dedicated time in each of its last three WWDC conferences to talk about its ARkit technology. Microsoft is leading the wearable charge and soon releasing the second iteration of its Hololens headset. Startups like Magic Leap have penetrated the AR market and tech moguls like Facebook are following suit and releasing their own tools like Spark AR.

Despite all this attention and talk of innovation, something about AR technologies just hasn’t clicked yet. Yes, we have Snapchat filters and apps like Pokemon Go and IKEA Place. But where is the futuristic society where AR technology is helping us navigate to our destination or shop at the grocery store? Why is AR not assisting us with our work and guiding us through the tasks of everyday life?

Simply put, the medium of traditional AR experiences are still lacking.

The Problems

The Hololens was a groundbreaking Mixed Reality headset. Unfortunately, it’s also a large and clunky piece of hardware. It has a limited viewing area and an expensive price tag. It’s not a mainstream device, and Microsoft is acknowledging that by positioning the Hololens 2 even further into the professional/corporate market.

Multiple Hololens 2 devices being used in a professional setting.

ARKit and ARcore have made significant capability jumps since their announcement, but they still limit your AR experiences to a phone/tablet. Accessible? Yes. But limited in input variance and computing power.

An Example ARKit App

The magic of the Hololens and Magic Leap is that you are surrounded by Mixed Reality. Mobile device screens limit the experience to small windows into the Augmented Reality world.

So where does that leave us? Well, we could just wait another ten years for the tech to advance. Or, we could create Augmented/Mixed Reality experiences in another way…