Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to provide office working environments with essentially limitless customizations, including screens, whiteboards or tables of any size and number, and the ability to store and switch between environments. Having an arbitrarily furnished office space for each project enables improved workflows as activities and trains of thought can be resumed based on the rich state of the surrounding environment, saved without effort from the last session. Still, adoption of VR in office working environments remains limited and the issue of how workers may be supported in this development is of interest.

A likely reason for the limited adoption is the isolation from the real world that is inherent to traditional head-mounted VR. Initially, augmented reality (AR) seems well positioned to address this limitation, combining a primary view of the real world with augmented virtual screens, whiteboards, etc, but pure AR has limitations of its own. With AR, it becomes difficult or impossible to hide away distractions of the real world and the potential for immersive AR (not restricted to a narrow field of view) is very limited with current technology. What we suggest, and want to bring up for discussion in this session, is that we should strive to enable deliberate mixing of the real and virtual, freely picking which parts to incorporate into our practical working environment.We have experimented with techniques to create interactive and pragmatic mixed reality (MR) where objects, furniture, and people from the real world may be mixed into the virtual environment as desired. Using a Kinect depth camera we captured a view of the real world in full 3D and integrated select parts into a virtual environment. The goal is to give the user full control of this space and make it possible to draw on the full advantages of VR while simultaneously feeling safe and aware of your physical surroundings.