When immersive experiences first became accessible to everyday consumers in the form of headsets like the Oculus Rift and Google Glass, the industry appeared ripe for mainstream acceptance. A few years later, the hype around VR and AR has died down. Then Facebook (the company) changed its name to Meta and signaled its investment in the metaverse. Suddenly everyone cared about VR and AR again. Yet I still find many people still aren’t quite clear on what all these terms mean. What’s the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality? What does ‘XR’ stand for, and what exactly is ‘mixed’ reality? Fret no more friends, I’m here to help. I should note that some of these terms are constantly evolving and that sometimes academic/technical/corporate usage differs from colloquial usage (we’re primarily focused on the latter here), but this guide should help you make sense of our imminent immersive future. Virtual reality is the OG. When people think of immersive computer-generated experiences beyond just gaming on a giant TV, VR is probably what comes to mind the most. Virtual reality generally refers to a fully immersive experience — replacing the real world with a fully computer-generated one. Typically, experiencing VR requires wearing an opaque headset that blocks your eyes from the real world. This generally counts even if the VR headset is creating a simulacrum of your surroundings. Some VR headsets, for instance, are able to project aspects of the real world into your field of view using headset-mounted cameras. Now things are getting a little muddier, but in general, AR is the counterpart to VR. While VR replaces the real world with computer-generated imagery, AR instead seeks to, erm, augment the real world with virtual experiences. Therefore, when you’re experiencing AR, your perception is still guided by real-world objects and events. Unlike VR, AR doesn’t require you to be fully immersed in a headset — or use a headset at all, for that matter. If you’ve used a Snapchat filter, you’ve used a form of AR. There are a number of apps now that allow you to superimpose 3D models onto an image of the real world — say, if you want to see how that armchair you’ve been eyeing will fit in your living room. I’m grouping these two together because depending on who you ask, these could be the same thing… or have more specific definitions. But in general, these are the two terms most often used as the over-arching terminology to encompass all computer-generated immersive experiences. Microsoft, for example, is fond of the term mixed reality as a term for all digitally-enhanced events — both AR and VR. This implies that reality and virtuality exist on a spectrum — the aptly-named reality-virtuality continuum — and has its roots in academic research for decades. It was coined by researchers Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino in a 1994 paper. Mixed reality is everything between these two extremes, so it generally works for both AR and VR. That includes devices that offer both technologies in one; you can imagine a headset that is transparent for augmented experiences but can go opaque when the user wants to be fully immersed. There are some even more complex and specific definitions for mixed reality, but the above should suffice for most of the time you encounter the term. So what about extended reality (XR), then? Well… in most situations, it pretty much means the same thing. That said, XR has gained some traction the last few years and is often defined more broadly; it’s also supposed to also cover all possible ‘R’s we haven’t even thought of yet. Mixed reality, while including AR and VR, tends to be a bit more associated with the former. Further details can be found on OUR FORUM.