The reality-virtuality continuum, and how augmented reality and virtual reality are different
Different shifted and mixed realities are relatively new concepts even for researchers (the first theoretical paper has been published in 1994), and they are just going mainstream right now. No wonder there’s quite a bit of confusion about the terminology, and sometimes you still hear people referring to the Google Glass as VR, or the Oculus Rift as AR. It’s a bit like calling GMail a social network. You might argue it’s not completely wrong, but definitely not right.
So what is, exactly, the difference between AR and VR?
For thousands of years humanity knew only one reality: the actual, or consensus reality. And for thousands of years, people wanted to escape. They fabricated tales and epics, taking the reader or listener to far away shores with unthinkable landscape and mythical creatures. They didn’t have the tools to create an immersive experience. Luckily for us, we have these tools now — and they are getting better by the day.
It’s important to define “immersive experience”. Immersion can be reached by altering the senses, and most importantly altering what we see. It’s not the only way to deliver an immersive experience, but it’s the most impactful. (If you’ve ever been to a Hollister or a Shanghai Tang, you know exactly that some level of immersion can be created through smelling, by using the same scents in every store.) This altering of the senses , most importantly vision, is predominantly achieved using computer hardware and software; therefore it is called computer mediation.
The reality-virtuality continuum is a scale, with consensus reality on one end, and virtual reality on the other. Computer mediation is another scale, and all shifted realities are defined on these two axes:
