Navigating New Realities: A Beginner's Guide to VR, AR, MR, XR, & Spatial Computing.

From VR to spatial computing: Explaining the key distinctions and overlaps in immersive tech.

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May 03, 2024

Just how many realities are there?

Welcome to the dizzying maze of immersive technology, where VR, AR, MR, and XR sound more like a bad hand in Scrabble than the future of digital interaction. If you are new to the immersive tech space you may find yourself wondering:

“How did we end up with so many realities?”
“Why are there multiple names to describe what are all in essence a “virtual” version of reality”
“What is Spatial Computing and why is it not an acronym!?”

Rest assured, you're not alone in your confusion! Believe it or not once you decode what these acronyms stand for, they actually do help distinguish how each technology is unique from the others. By the end of this article, you'll be fluent in the language of immersive tech, effortlessly dropping buzzwords with the best of them!

Extended Reality

Extended Reality (XR) comes from the idea of “extending” your reality. The X can also be interpreted as having a similar function as the x variable in mathematics. XR is a collective term that encompasses VR, AR, and MR. It can be used to refer to pretty much any reality-altering tech. So if you’re ever in doubt, the safest option is to just say XR!

Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) creates an immersive digital environment that isolates the user from the physical world. This is typically achieved through headsets that utilize high resolution screens and advanced sensors to track your movements and place you in a virtual world. There’s a whole lot of cool tech at work to make this happen, but the nitty gritty is that virtual reality immerses the user in a completely virtual world that can be interacted with!

Even though XR is the technical catch all term for all things immersive tech, VR is often used this way since it’s the most commonly known term. Breach creates a wide range of custom XR solutions from VR Museum experiences, to envisioning data in Augmented Reality. However, we often go by the name Breach VR, since most people who aren’t familiar with immersive tech would recognize VR over XR. In the following video you can see an example of a full VR experience in which you are placed in a new virtual reality completely isolated from the real world.

Teaser trailer for a project we’re currently working on: Project Lost Island

Mixed Reality

Mixed Reality (MR) blends the virtual world with the physical by anchoring virtual objects to the real world. This integration allows users to see and interact with the real world and digital content simultaneously. Since mixed reality is an emerging tech, only the newest generation of VR headsets can typically utilize MR to it’s full capabilities.

Early testing of a Mixed Reality version of Kartoffl

Mixed Reality is often associated with “passthrough”. Passthrough can be thought of as a part of mixed reality and refers to a feature that allows you to see the real world through a VR headset’s cameras. While you can see your real world environment in both MR and passthrough, MR takes things a step further by “mixing” or anchoring virtual elements to the real world so that they actually interact. The video above shows the MR version of our game Kartoffl in which the spuds interact with the environment and furniture as if they were actually there. Meanwhile, the video below is the passthrough version of Kartoffl. In this version, the spuds do not recognize your real environment and will happily walk through a wall or any other real world object in their path.

Kartoffl with Passthrough enabled

AR: Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) layers digital enhancements, such as images, text, graphs, or animations, over the real world. Unlike VR, AR does not replace the real world but rather adds to it, providing a composite view that enriches the user's perception of reality. While both AR and MR project and anchor virtual elements onto a real world object, AR typically can’t be directly interacted with. Imagine a virtual cup on a real world table. In MR you could pick up the cup but in AR you could only see the cup. If you were to place them between full VR and the real world, AR would lean towards the real world and MR towards the virtual.

Specialized AR headsets, like Microsoft Hololens, usually involve looking through a transparent screen rather than cameras like traditional VR headsets. AR is often utilized without a headset and can be viewed and interacted with through more accessible devices, such as a phones. In the below photo you can see an example of how we used interactive AR tech to visualize the future of fish farming for Eide Fjordbruk.

Interactive model utilizing AR to visualize fish farming

Spatial Computing

Spatial Computing can be thought of as a technology that integrates the physical world with digital assets, allowing computers to interact with and understand the three-dimensional space around them. In many ways it is the same as Mixed Reality and encompasses a variety of XR tech.

While Apple did not create the term “Spatial Computing” their use of the term while promoting the new Apple Vision Pro is responsible for its current popularity. This was largely a marketing strategy to help differentiate it from other competitors, such as Meta, who focus on popular consumer XR use cases, like gaming. From a consumer standpoint, spatial computing is commonly used for functions like placing virtual screens in your environment and is generally more associated with productivity and creating helpful tools.

Breach VR

That’s it! After this whirlwind tour of immersive technologies, you should always have an idea of what reality is actually being discussed. Keep in mind that many of these terms are used interchangeably and how they are used is constantly evolving! If you’ve never heard of us, Breach VR specializes in creating custom XR solutions. Whether you're looking to create spellbinding experiences for museums, visualize complex data, or step into entirely new realities, we’re here to bring your visions to life!

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