The Limitations of Reality

Abstract

Existing conceptualisations of mixed reality technologies embody a fundamental assumption, that they are a tool to simulate consistent ‘realities’. We present three examples of how this assumption constrains designers: One way to avoid these issues is to define such ‘immersive technologies’ purely as motion tracked sensory stimulation devices. This offers a basic building block for design, however in the the future a range of higher level concepts will be required to enable new and exciting uses of VR and AR equipment. Convincing simulation of realities is only a small subset of the potential uses.