VR and Mixed Reality Vocabulary Record

VR and Mixed Reality Vocabulary Record

Stable working definitions

Virtual reality primarily replaces the visible physical environment with a simulated scene. Head and controller or hand tracking can still depend on the physical room even when the user does not see it.

Mixed reality keeps a camera-mediated view of the physical environment and places digital content into a spatial model of that environment. The useful distinction is not the brand label. It is what the user sees, what the system senses, how digital objects are anchored, and what happens when sensing fails.

Augmented reality is often used more broadly for digital information shown over or alongside the physical environment. A simple overlay may not understand surfaces, depth, occlusion, or physical objects in the way a room-aware mixed-reality experience does.

Passthrough

Passthrough is a camera and display pipeline. It is not unobstructed sight. Image quality, depth cues, latency, exposure, field of view, distortion, tracking, and software behavior affect what the user perceives.

Meta's launch description says Quest 3 can transition between fully immersive and blended experiences and uses full-color passthrough:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/09/meet-meta-quest-3-mixed-reality-headset/

This is vendor language. A current product test is needed for any task-specific claim.

Spatial mapping and boundaries

A room map can give software a representation of surfaces and objects. A boundary can warn a user about a defined activity area. Neither is a guarantee that every obstacle, person, pet, movement, or environmental change will be detected or represented accurately.

Current setup and warning language belongs to the device-specific safety record:

https://www.meta.com/quest/safety-center/

Requirements before labels

For any proposed use, record whether the user must see the real room, read physical objects, interact with people, maintain depth awareness, move, sit, manipulate digital objects against surfaces, or recover quickly when tracking fails.

The device mode should follow those requirements. "Spatial computing," "metaverse," "VR," and "MR" are not substitutes for an interaction specification.