Video-based AR

Passthrough is a capability of a mixed reality headset to show the outside world to the user by using cameras to pass through a video feed. It is also known as "video passthrough". This makes it a sort of pseudo-augmented reality or some people call it mixed reality.

Video passthrough was popularized by the Lynx R1 and furthered by the Quest 2 and Quest Pro.

One of the difficulties of doing passthrough right is the positional difference between cameras on the outside of a headset and the eyes of the user. So the image has to go through a distortion process. On the Quest Pro and Quest 3, this uses a neural network. Other devices potentially also use a neural network.