The End Game: Extended Reality (XR) Transforms Platform Sustainment

By Scott Gourley

While once the stuff of science fiction, virtual and augmented reality are now accessible to just about everyone.  Even our smartphones are making augmented reality mainstream, with applications in practically every environment, from entertainment, to hospitality and travel, to health care, theme parks, automotive and more, this technology is now touching almost every aspect of our daily lives, immersing us in new environments and helping us see and interact with our world in entirely new ways.

This exciting new technology –and how it can be used - is rapidly evolving, and expanding that the new advancements are outpacing the terminology used to describe them. In these cases, terms and acronyms once pegged to a particular platform type or capability are being quickly modified and re-modified to reflect a broader use across multiple environments.

A classic example is the rapid evolution of how information is being presented, accessed and employed in manufacturing, maintenance, and system sustainment environments, where virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have blended with mixed reality (MR) capabilities to create what can only be described as a new, extended reality (XR).