A scientometric survey of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality

Most histories of virtual, augmented, or mixed reality—hereafter collectively referred to as xR —place the origin of modern xR as Ivan Sutherland’s work at the University of Utah in the 1960s. “Virtual reality,” however, had not yet come to be. Outside of Sutherland’s work, the first academic articles describing what we would now call xR appeared only in the late 1980s, 20 years after Sutherland’s work. This article traces the evolution of xR from those early mentions to the present day, highlighting and surveying the key topics through a novel scientometric analysis of the literature.