Before 2024 the field used Extended Reality (XR) as the umbrella term covering AR, VR and MR. When Apple launched the Vision Pro, the company reframed the category. Vision Pro was deliberately not marketed as an AR or VR headset; it was ‘Apple’s first spatial computer’, and spatial computing was positioned as the next computing paradigm after the personal computer, mobile and the iPad.
The term itself goes back further. Simon Greenwold defined it in a 2003 MIT Media Lab thesis as ‘human interaction with a machine in which the machine retains and manipulates referents to real objects and spaces’. Apple’s contribution was making it the dominant industry vocabulary.
In practice, spatial computing overlaps almost entirely with AR and MR. The distinguishing claim is that the computer responds to space: the device understands a real room, places content inside it, persists it across sessions, and integrates real and digital interactions through gestures, eye tracking and voice. Spatial audio and spatial video, both Apple format extensions, fall under the same umbrella.
For a website, the relevant question is whether your content is accessible on spatial computing devices. The answer is yes by default: a standard PausAR Viewer page using GLB and USDZ already works on Vision Pro through Safari, with no separate build, and the same USDZ opens spatially via Apple Quick Look. Spatial computing as a category does not require new authoring, it requires standards-based web 3D, which is exactly what PausAR Viewer already delivers.
| Term | Who uses it | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Spatial Computing | Apple, NVIDIA, increasingly mainstream | AR plus MR, content interacts with physical space |
| Extended Reality (XR) | Industry standard term | Umbrella for AR, MR and VR |
| Mixed Reality (MR) | Microsoft, Meta, technical community | Real and virtual objects interact |
| Augmented Reality (AR) | Apple, Google, general public | Digital content overlaid on the real view |
In practice, very little. Apple uses 'spatial computing' as the broader category covering AR and MR; the AR overlap is essentially total. The framing differs: AR describes the visual layer added to reality, spatial computing describes the computer that understands and responds to physical space.
No. A standards-based PausAR Viewer page works on Vision Pro through Safari out of the box. The interactive 3D viewer renders directly, and a USDZ file opens spatially through Apple Quick Look.
They overlap heavily. Mixed Reality is the older technical term for environments where real and digital objects interact. Spatial computing is Apple's broader marketing umbrella for the same kind of experience, plus the wider computing paradigm around it (spatial audio, persistence, gestural input).
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