One of the really big pushes around Windows 10 has been mixed reality. It started six months ahead of the release of the OS, when Microsoft announced HoloLens and a special version of Windows 10 called Windows Holographic. But that wasn"t the end of the company"s 3D ambitions, because a couple of years later, it actually added the Windows Mixed Reality shell into the OS.
Prior to that, the firm introduced an array of VR headsets that would start at $299, a very low price for the time. And around the same time, Microsoft introduced Paint 3D to Windows 10, and at the time, Paint 3D was actually planned to replace Paint.
Around this time, a folder called 3D Objects was added to the OS, because Microsoft truly believed that consumers would be interested in this stuff. And now, that folder is going away, signaling an end to the giant mixed reality push. The change showed up in yesterday"s Windows 10 Insider Preview build (via Windows Latest), which was build 21322.
Sadly, Microsoft"s mixed reality plans never took off, at least from a consumer perspective. In the enterprise, customers have found some important use cases for it, as we"ve seen from products like HoloLens 2 and newer Windows Mixed Reality headsets that are aimed squarely at businesses. But for things like Paint 3D and using the Windows Mixed Reality shell in Windows 10, it turned out that it didn"t have the future with consumers that Microsoft thought it would.