Immersive technologies advance May 1, 2021 One of our cover stories this month highlights how augmented reality (AR) is being used in industrial settings to enhance plant safety (Enhancing Plant Safety via Virtual ‘On-Site’ Visits, pp. 30–34). While AR was already gaining momentum before the pandemic in industrial applications like maintenance and training, the need for distancing imposed by the coronavirus has accelerated the use of many digital technologies, including immersive technologies like AR.
AR, VR, MR and XR Augmented reality places digital images onto real-world images, so you can, for example, see information about a pump superimposed on top of the actual pump using an AR headset. Virtual reality (VR) on the other hand, takes the user to a completely computer-generated simulation. A combination of these two technologies, AR and VR, is referred to as mixed reality (MR). Collectively, AR, VR and MR are referred to as XR, or extended reality.