VR / AR / MR / XR / RR: Why you shouldn't care about the differences.

Everyone knows about VR (Virtual Reality) by now. You may even have heard of AR (Augmented Reality), but what about MR, XR and RR?

Have a guess if you care to. I'll wait. I'm not going to tell you what they mean yet, because I think there's something important to be said first.

NOBODY CARES!

Of course everyone knows what VR is, it's been around in various forms for a long time. Some great Sci-Fi has been written about it. If you've heard of AR it's probably because of SnapChat, or the highly successful Pokémon Go app that launched in 2016.

The rest have been coined recently (mostly by large companies marketing departments) to try to separate themselves from the pack in an already small and fragmented group of in-the-know immersive technologies enthusiasts.

The issue here is two fold. Firstly, if you're going to coin a new term, you need enough people to care what it means in the first place. The reason we now know what AR is, is that millions(billions?) of people have seen what it is in the form of Pokemon. There's no point in trying to boil down something that no one has heard of to a catchy 2 letter abbreviation. Even if you do know the meaning, try asking a friend "Have you seen that new XR device from company X?". No doubt, they will respond by asking what "XR" is.

Secondly, you can't change language by force (especially in this case, where hardly anyone has a proper VR device).

I need to explain what MR, XR and RR... Are... (I sound like a bloody pirate), now so that you can fully understand this point.

MR (MIXED-REALITY): Was first dreamed up by Microsoft to describe their HoloLens device and confuse people. For all intents and purposes, it's AR, just Microsoft branded.

XR (EXTENDED-REALITY / X-REALITY / CROSS-REALITY): Designed to be a catch 'em all (get it?) term for AR, VR, and MR; I don't know where it originated, nor do I care, it's unnecessary and confusing and whomever coined it deserves a stern talking to, in my opinion.

RR (REAL REALITY): Yes, you read that correctly. Now do you get what I'm throwing down?

What you have to realize about burgeoning tech industry people, is that a lot of them (outside of the core developers and visionaries) are useless. They see something they think might be the "next big thing", then jump in front of people waving their arms saying things like "Oh ya? Well, have you heard about X-R? You should fly me out to your conference to do a talk about it!". No joke, this is super common. I won't even go to most VR conferences now, because I know half the ass-hats doing talks are doing things like this. Why would I listen to some talent-less clown, on stage, regurgitate what I told them about 4 years ago with new marketing terms?

I digress.

The point is, until everyone has an "XR" device with a giant "XR" logo on it, and all the kids are playing the fancy new "XR" game, you should put it out of your head.

For now, these terms do nothing but hurt the industries that they've sprung from. Confusing potential customers in an already fragmented market and muddling the language.

Thanks for reading!

Follow me @anticleric to read more rants about the VR industry and more.

UPDATE: