What’s new in Mixed Reality in Power Apps

You wanted to buy furniture or redecorate your working area. You first take a measurement using a measuring tape, bringing that measurement with you to the store where you want to buy furniture. Now, you are in the store, you bought the furniture you wanted, brought it into your house, and realized it doesn’t fit in the space you want to place it. Or the color and design did not match.

Mixed Reality in Power Apps is now available. As mobile devices are capable of Augmented Reality other than HoloLens, business users and makers can leverage and create a low-code application in Power Apps.

Mixed Reality components in Power Apps are the following: 

  • Measured in MR – We can easily take a measurement and leverage that measurement you collect to filter out the products and estimations. 
  • 3D object and View in MR – help you visualize the products selected from digital to the real world. 
  • View shape in MR – helps you validate virtual volume representation. 
  • Markup in MR Control (preview) – This control allows you to draw or add an arrow to an object. (add an image of Markup in MR Control).

A lot of significant enhancements have been made since in preview.

What’s New in MR Controls

Product Cataloging in Power Apps

You can easily visualize the selected product and display the items in the real world without going out from the live camera feed and selecting another object to visualize it.

Viewing a 3D object in media gallery

To set this up, In the Advance properties of the View in MR, you need to define the following:

  1. ItemSource – required 3D object location.
  2. ItemsLabel – the label that will be shown in the media gallery when you select an object
  3. ItemsThumbnail – thumbnail link of the object
  4. ItemsObjectWidth, ItemsObjectHeight, ItemsObjectDepth – the size of the 3D objects.

Add the 3D objects and images as an attached file from my data source, which I use List in this scenario. Copy the location of the 3D objects and image link to the fields named ObjectLink and ImageLink.

Fields in Microsoft List

Field NameData Type
TitleText
WidthText
HeightText
DepthText
ObjectLinkHyperlink or Picture and choose Picture Format
ImageLinkHyperlink or Picture and choose Picture Format

Note: Don’t use the new Image column as it is not working in the View in MR properties ItemsThumbnail as of this moment.

View in MR Properties using the ItemsSource, ItemsLabel, ImageLink, ItemsObjectWidth, ItemsObjectHeight, ItemsObjectDepth

When binding the values of the View In MR properties, you use the internal name of the fields.

Tips: Use this property to show multiple 3D objects in the media gallery. If you want to view a single object selected, use the following properties:

  • Source
  • ObjectDepth
  • ObjectWidth
  • ObjectHeight
View in MR properties

Using Image in View in MR

If you don’t have a 3D object, you can use Images in .jpg and .png file format to view the object. Previously, you could only see the 2D objects when using the image.

With the new changes, you can easily visualize the object’s volume. It will have a virtual cube if you define the object’s size.

As Power Platform empowers us to do more with less, from building a low code application to infusing AI and automation. These added components in Power Apps will help us increase collaboration and drives conversation into sales. 

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