✤MURO Making : Windows Mixed Reality✤

 Note: I'll use acronyms for some of the longer names I'll repeat in this post. 'WMR' will stand for 'Windows Mixed Reality,' and 'MRP' will stand for 'Mixed Reality Portal.'

 
    Hi everyone, it's MURO! I posted a little about my previous headsets in an earlier post, but today, I wanted to dive into a now deprecated Virtual Reality platform that I used to use - Windows Mixed Reality and Mixed Reality Portal.

 

What's a Virtual Reality platform, and what does it do? 

     Windows Mixed Reality (and the program Mixed Reality Portal) were how you hooked specific head-mounted displays (HMDs, which usually just get referred to as 'headsets') to your computer. In order to actually use your headset, you have to use a VR platform. If you had any of the following VR headsets, WMR was the platform you'd use to use your headset.

• Microsoft HoloLens (2016)

• Lenovo Explorer (2017)

• Acer AH101 (2017)

• Dell Visor (2017)

• HP VR1000 (2017)

• Samsung Odyssey (2017) - Not to be mistaken for the Odyssey G-series or Odyssey NEO, a monitor line also created by Samsung.

• Asus HC102 (2018)

• Samsung Odyssey+ (2018)

• HP Reverb (2019)

• Acer OJO 500 (2019)

• Microsoft HoloLens 2 (2019)
  

• HP Reverb G2 (2020)

    My personal experience with WMR and MRP wasn't the greatest. My computer had always been just on the cusp of being capable of running VR, meaning I suffered constant tech issues. The audio suddenly blared static; my display went dark, and things froze or glitched. Every time I got online to play, I desperately ran to launch SteamVR, praying that the whole operation didn't fall apart. Duct tape and a dream was the glue of my early VR hardware.

 

    This was because of a combination of issues and wasn't entirely Windows' fault - my computer was barely on the cusp of being 'VR Compatible,' there wasn't enough power for my headset to run, and I needed an external USB drive to power it. Over the years, as I naturally replaced things (like my computer), I had fewer and fewer issues. The tech was also much newer, and companies rushed to enter the market at the time. With a new customer base that didn't quite know what to expect and companies that didn't quite understand what they were doing, early VR tech was a gamble on both sides.

    This part may be a personal preference, but I didn't enjoy MRP. You had two options for places to load into: Skyloft and Cliff House. It was wasting my computer's resources to have an entire environment to load into whenever I was done with whatever app or game I was using. VR is already a demanding load on a system, and other programs (like SteamVR or Meta Quest Link) have clean, minimal loading screens to offset that. If MRP had included a clean 'starting area' as an option, I would've liked it a lot more.

    I've gotten a lot of the information in this post from VRcompare - which I recommend if you read up on your VR headsets. They include information like each headset's visible Field of View (FoV), the retail price if it requires base stations, the display's resolution per eye, and a manufacturer's section where you can see each company's releases and upcoming ones. It's a website I wish I had when I was starting and didn't know what to look for!

That's all from me for today, see you next time!