Despite the proliferation of Extended Reality (XR) across sectors such as education, healthcare, industry, and defense, the definitions and boundaries of XR—including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR)—remain inconsistent across disciplines. Evolving capabilities such as sensorimotor integration and multimodal interaction, have challenged the utility of foundational frameworks, such as the real-to-virtual continuum (Milgram & Kishino, 1994). This study explores the ontological ambiguity surrounding XR by gathering insights from stakeholders through a mixed-methods survey. Participants shared perspectives on preferred definitions, usage contexts, and challenges posed by inconsistent terminology. Findings reveal that definitional inconsistencies hinder cross-disciplinary communication, obscure vendor capabilities, and complicate collaboration across sectors. Our analysis highlights how XR concepts have evolved over time and identifies key gaps in existing taxonomies. Our findings underscore the need for a more robust, cross-disciplinary ontology to guide continued communication and innovation in XR.
AmbrosioA. P.FidalgoM. I. R. (2020). Past, present and future of Virtual Reality: Analysis of its technological variables and definitions. Culture & History Digital Journal, 9(1), e010.
2.
AzumaR. T. (1997). A survey of augmented reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 6(4), 355–385.
3.
BioccaF.LevyM. R. (1995). Communication in the age of virtual reality. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
4.
BowskillJ.MorphettJ.DownieJ. (1997, October13). A taxonomy for enhanced reality systems [Symposium]. Digest of Papers, First International Symposium on Wearable Computers (pp. 175–176). IEEE.
5.
BrendaL. (2014) Computers as theatre (2nd ed.). Addison-Wesley.
6.
BrooksF. P. (1999). What’s real about virtual reality?IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 19(6), 16–27.
7.
CantR.CooperS.SussexR.BogossianF. (2019). What’s in a name? Clarifying the nomenclature of virtual simulation. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 27, 26–30.
8.
CarterM.EglistonB. (2024). Fantasies of virtual reality: Untangling fiction, fact, and threat. MIT Press.
9.
CipressoP.GiglioliI. A. C.RayaM. A.RivaG. (2018). The past, present, and future of virtual and augmented reality research: A network and cluster analysis of the literature. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 2086.
10.
ÇöltekinA.LochheadI.MaddenM.ChristopheS.DevauxA.PettitC.LockO.ShuklaS.HermanL.StachoňZ.KubíčekP.SnopkováD.BernardesS.HedleyN. (2020). Extended reality in spatial sciences: A review of research challenges and future directions. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 9(7), 439.
11.
DzardanovaE.KasapakisV. (2022). Virtual reality: A journey from vision to commodity. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 45(1), 18–30.
12.
FeinerS.MacIntyreB.SeligmannD. (1993). Knowledge-based augmented reality. Communications of the ACM, 36(7), 53–62.
13.
FisherS. S.McGreevyM.HumphriesJ.RobinettW. (1987). Virtual environment display system. Proceedings of the 1986 Workshop on Interactive 3D Graphics, Chapel Hill, NC (pp. 77–87). Association for Computing Machinery.
14.
FletcherJ. D.BelanichJ.MosesF.FehrA.MossJ. (2017). Effectiveness of augmented reality & augmented virtuality [Conference session]. MODSIM (Modeling & Simulation of Systems and Applications) World Conference, No. 48, Norfolk, VA.
15.
FurnessT. A.III. (2014). Introduction. In DelaneyB. (Ed.), Sex, drugs, and tessellation: The truth about virtual reality, as revealed in the pages of CyberEdge Journal (pp. VII–X). CyberEdge Information Services,
16.
GallagherA. G.RitterE. M.ChampionH.HigginsG.FriedM. P.MosesG.SmithC. D.SatavaR. M. (2005). Virtual reality simulation for the operating room: Proficiency-based training as a paradigm shift in surgical skills training. Annals of Surgery, 241(2), 364–372.
17.
GibsonJ. J. (1978). The ecological approach to the visual perception of pictures. Leonardo, 11(3), 227–235.
18.
HineE. (2025). Virtual reality, cyberspace, and embodiment: A historical debate with contemporary resonance. Virtual Reality, 29, Article 63.
19.
KalawskyR. S.StedmonA. W.HillK.CookC. A. (2000). A taxonomy of technology: Defining augmented reality. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 44(5), 507–510.
20.
Kardong-EdgrenS. S.FarraS. L.AlinierG.YoungH. M. (2019). A call to unify definitions of virtual reality. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 31, 28–34.
21.
KellyK.HeilbrunA.StacksB. (1989). Virtual reality: An interview with Jaron Lanier. Whole Earth Review, 64, 108–119.
22.
KlinkerG.ReicherR.BruggeB. (2000). Distributed user tracking concepts for augmented reality applications. In PalagiL.BilofR. (Eds.), Proceedings IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Augmented Reality (ISAR 2000) (pp. 37–44). IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISAR.2000.880921
23.
LaValleS. M. (2023). Virtual reality. Cambridge University Press.
24.
MannS.DoP. V.FurnessT.YuanY.IorioJ.WangZ. (2023). Fundamentals of all the realities: Virtual, augmented, mediated, multimediated, and beyond. In NeeA. Y. C.OngS. K. (Eds.), Springer handbook of augmented reality (pp. 3–34). Springer.
25.
MilgramP.KishinoF. (1994). A taxonomy of mixed reality visual displays. IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, E-77D(12), 1321–1329.
26.
MinskyM. (1980, June). Telepresence. OMNI Magazine.
27.
NilssonN. C.NordahlR.SerafinS. (2016). Immersion revisited: A review of existing definitions of immersion and their relation to different theories of presence. Human technology, 12(2), 108–134.
28.
NortonR. (1972). What is virtuality?The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 30(4), 499–505.
29.
O’DonnellJ. (2024, October28). Palmer Luckey on the Pentagon’s future of mixed reality [Blog article]. MIT Technology Review.
30.
O’ShielD. (2020). Disappearing boundaries? Reality, virtuality and the possibility of “pure” mixed reality (MR). Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 20(1), Article e1887570.
31.
RadiantiJ.MajchrzakT. A.FrommJ.WohlgenanntI. (2020). A systematic review of immersive virtual reality applications for higher education: Design elements, lessons learned, and research agenda. Computers & Education, 147, Article 103778.
32.
SchmorrowD. D. (2005). Foundations of augmented cognition. CRC Press.
33.
SkarbezR.SmithM.WhittonM. C. (2021). Revisiting Milgram and Kishino’s reality-virtuality continuum. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2, Article 647997.
34.
SlaterM.BanakouD.BeaccoA.GallegoJ.Macia-VarelaF.OlivaR. (2022). A separate reality: An update on place illusion and plausibility in virtual reality. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 3, Article 914392.
35.
SpeicherM.HallB. D.NebelingM. (2019, May4–9). What is mixed reality? [Conference session]. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Glasgow (pp. 1–15). Association for Computing Machinery.
36.
StanneyK. M. (2002). Handbook of virtual environments: Design, implementation, and applications. CRC Press.
37.
StanneyK. M.NyeH.HaddadS.HaleK. S.PadronC. K.CohnJ. V. (2021). Extended reality (XR) environments. In SalvendyG.KarwowsiW. (Eds.), Handbook of human factors and ergonomics (5th ed., pp. 782–815). John Wiley & Sons.
StoneR. (2024, June). XR (VR, AR, MR) – Some basic definitions and examples (Revision 2) [Blog post]. LinkedIn.
40.
SutherlandI. E. (1968). A head-mounted three dimensional display [Conference session]. Proceedings of the December 9–11, 1968, Fall Joint Computer Conference, Part I, San Francisco, CA (pp. 757–764). Association for Computing Machinery.
41.
TalapuruS.DantuR.UpadhyayK.BadruddojaS.ZamanS. (2023). The dark side of the metaverse: Why is it falling short of expectations? [Conference session]. 2023 5th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems and Applications (pp. 287–296). IEEE.
42.
VertucciR.D’OnofrioS.RicciardiS.De NinoM. (2023). History of augmented reality. In NeeA. Y. C.OngS. K. (Eds.), Springer handbook of augmented reality (pp. 35–50). Springer International Publishing.
43.
ZackariassonP.WilsonT. L. (2010). Paradigm shifts in the video game industry. Competitiveness Review: An International Business Journal, 20(2), 139–151.
44.
ZhouF.DuhH. B. L.BillinghurstM. (2008). Trends in augmented reality tracking, interaction and display: A review of ten years of ISMAR [Symposium]. 2008 7th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (pp. 193–202). IEEE.
