Why You Should Embrace the Extended Reality Continuum

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Emerging mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies come with specialized terminology. Beyond MR and Virtual Reality, this technology space includes terms such as Augmented Reality, Augmented Virtuality, Extended Reality, Spatial Computing, Wearable Computing, Ubiquitous Computing, and Metaverse. By the time you read this, there may be more.

Any discussion of "digital realities" requires a commitment to defining terms and contexts. The overabundance of terms can be laboriously exhausting to understand and erode the excitement and interest of curious people outside of innovators and early adopters.

MR and VR are destined to merge into a single entity and are already slowly converging. We need to take this into account when talking about the technology space by being concise when referring to the general and the intentional and when diving into the nuances.

Fortunately, we already have a way to tame the jargon and don't need to expand the already heavy lexicon. Extended Reality (XR) is the consensus term for "all combined real and virtual environments and human-computer interactions".

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look here The Extended Reality Continuum

The reality-virtuality continuum describes a space of digital reality with extremes of reality and virtual reality. Mixed reality is the spectrum between the endpoints. From a contemporary perspective, there are clear boundaries between reality and MR, and reality and VR. The MR spectrum is naturally and irreconcilably fuzzy and without well-defined boundaries. Reality and VR are discrete states, but MR is a nonlinear gradient.

Extended reality is the spectrum from MR to including virtual reality, or from another point of view, it is the reality-virtuality continuum excluding reality. We can call this subset of the reality-virtuality continuum the extended reality continuum.

Advances in technology and improved experience design will reduce the significance of the differences between MR and VR, making even the most sophisticated users unaware of them. Classifications, as defined by the XR continuum, will only make sense to designers and developers.

The impact on the design of the experiment

It's interesting to imagine that the distinction between MR and VR isn't always as straightforward as it is today. We find that early examples of immersive digital experiences are fluid and not distinctly MR or VR. This duality raises questions about the impact of being both MR and VR on the quality of the user experience.

For the purposes of exploration, let's assume the hardware and software exist to support both high-quality MR and VR experiences. The form factor is immaterial, but to aid the imagination, consider the visor of Geordi La Forge (Star Trek: The Next Generation), any helmeted character in Star Wars (Darth Vader, the Mandalorian, stormtroopers), or an implanted device (contact lenses or prosthetic eyes) as in Black Mirror "The Entire Story...