Abstract Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies continue to grow and present possibilities to change the ways we learn, accomplish tasks, and interact with the world. However, widespread adoption has continually languished below purported potential. We suggest that a more complete understanding of the underlying motives driving users to take advantage of VR and AR would aid researchers by consolidating fragmented knowledge across domains and by identifying paths for additional inquiry. Additionally, practitioners could identify areas of unmet motives for using VR and AR. To examine the motives for virtualization, we draw upon Gibson’s seminal work on affordances to create a framework of generalized affordances for virtually assisted activities relative to the affordances of physical reality. This framework facilitates comparison of virtualized activities to non-virtualized activities, comparison of similar activities across VR and AR, and delineates areas of inquiry for future research. The validity of the framework was explored through two quantitative studies and one qualitative study of a wide variety of professionals. We found that participants perceive a significant difference between physical reality and both VR and AR for all proposed affordances, and that for many affordances, users perceive a difference in the ability of AR and VR to enact them. The qualitative study confirmed the general structure of the framework, while also revealing additional sub-affordances to explore. Theoretically, this suggests that examining the affordances that differentiate these technologies from physical reality may be a valid approach to understanding why users adopt these technologies. Practitioners may find success by focusing development on the specific affordances that VR or AR is best equipped to enact.

中文翻译：

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虚拟现实和增强现实的可供性框架

摘要 虚拟现实 (VR) 和增强现实 (AR) 技术不断发展并呈现出改变我们学习、完成任务和与世界互动的方式的可能性。然而，广泛采用一直低于声称的潜力。我们建议，更全面地了解推动用户利用 VR 和 AR 的潜在动机，将有助于研究人员整合跨领域的零散知识，并确定进一步探究的路径。此外，从业者可以确定使用 VR 和 AR 的未满足动机的领域。为了研究虚拟化的动机，我们利用 Gibson 在可供性方面的开创性工作，为与物理现实的可供性相关的虚拟辅助活动创建了广义可供性框架。该框架有助于比较虚拟化活动与非虚拟化活动，比较 VR 和 AR 中的类似活动，并描绘出未来研究的研究领域。该框架的有效性是通过对各种专业人士的两项定量研究和一项定性研究进行的。我们发现，对于所有提议的可供性，参与者感知到物理现实与 VR 和 AR 之间的显着差异，并且对于许多可供性，用户感知到 AR 和 VR 执行它们的能力存在差异。定性研究证实了该框架的一般结构，同时还揭示了要探索的其他子可供性。理论上，这表明检查将这些技术与物理现实区分开来的可供性可能是理解用户为何采用这些技术的有效方法。从业者可以通过将开发重点放在 VR 或 AR 最适合制定的特定可供性上来取得成功。