XR Analytics Glossary

The vocabulary behind spatial, immersive and AI-driven analytics — written for XR teams, not for marketing decks. Each entry opens with a one-sentence definition we keep stable for citation.

Spatial UX

XR Analytics

XR analytics is the practice of measuring and interpreting user behavior inside extended-reality experiences — VR, AR and MR — using spatial telemetry instead of clicks or page views.

Spatial Analytics

Spatial analytics is the analysis of user actions inside a 3D coordinate system, where position, orientation and proximity to objects are first-class signals.

Spatial Heatmap

A spatial heatmap is a heatmap rendered inside a 3D scene, colour-coding density of presence, attention or interaction across surfaces and volumes.

Session Replay (XR)

XR session replay is the reconstruction of a single user session inside a 3D scene, used to investigate friction, crashes or unexpected behavior with full spatial context.

Spatial Computing

Spatial computing is the use of computing systems that understand and operate inside three-dimensional space, blending physical and digital environments.

Passthrough MR

Passthrough MR is mixed reality rendered by compositing the headset's camera feed with virtual content, used by Meta Quest 3, Vision Pro and Android XR devices.

VR Training Analytics

VR training analytics is the measurement of learner behaviour inside immersive training experiences — completion, comfort, time-to-proficiency and behavioural fidelity.

Behavior signals

Gaze Heatmap

A gaze heatmap is a 3D visualization that aggregates where users directed their attention inside an immersive scene, projected onto surfaces or volumes.

Behavior Signals

Behavior signals are interpreted patterns — hesitation, repetition, dwell, missed affordances — extracted from raw XR telemetry to describe what a user actually experienced.

Locomotion Telemetry

Locomotion telemetry is the stream of position, orientation and movement-mode events that describes how a user traversed a virtual environment.

Hand Tracking

Hand tracking is the inference of finger and palm pose from headset cameras, used as a controller-free input modality in modern XR runtimes.

Dwell Time

Dwell time in XR is the duration a user spent attending to or interacting with a specific object, surface or region inside a 3D scene.

Hesitation

Hesitation is a behaviour signal flagged when a user stops, looks around or repeats an action without progressing, often indicating an unclear affordance.

Comfort & safety

Presence

Presence is the subjective sensation of 'being there' inside an immersive experience, usually inferred in XR analytics from continuity of motion, stable interaction and absence of disengagement cues.

Comfort Score

A comfort score is a per-session or per-scene indicator that estimates how physically comfortable users were, derived from head-motion patterns, locomotion choices and disengagement events.

Engines & SDKs

OpenXR

OpenXR is the royalty-free Khronos standard that lets a single XR application target multiple runtimes — Meta Horizon OS, SteamVR, visionOS, Android XR — through a unified API.

WebXR

WebXR is the W3C standard that exposes VR and AR rendering and input to web browsers, enabling immersive experiences delivered as ordinary URLs.

Unity XR

Unity XR is Unity's umbrella for VR, AR and MR development, exposed through the XR Plug-in Management system and the XR Interaction Toolkit.

Unreal XR

Unreal XR refers to VR, AR and MR development inside Unreal Engine 5 using the OpenXR plugin, Enhanced Input and the XR Template.

Android XR

Android XR is Google's XR runtime for headsets and glasses, designed for partner OEMs and built on the Android stack with OpenXR support.

Meta Horizon OS

Meta Horizon OS is the operating system that powers Meta Quest headsets and is being opened to partner OEMs as a shared XR runtime.

visionOS

visionOS is Apple's operating system for Vision Pro and future spatial-computing devices, built around gaze-and-pinch input and a strict on-device privacy model.