Eh. It’s a bit more handwavey than that. It’s whatever you want it to be.

Virtual reality was supposed to be simulated, but “actual still science fiction” levels of simulated. seamless 3d environment, intercepting nerve signals to look and intuitively control an avatar or ready player one had a haptic suit.

AR stems from that and was supposed to be “the real world, but cyber”. Or “VR, but with real world elements”. In the novel “virtual light”, it’s supposed to overlay that “datasturce of cyberspace” on the real world. Even then it was never really clear what purpose cyberspace as a 3d world would have, what data looks like or should look like, and what the advantage of that visualization would be. Or why would rather see that than what the world looks like.

Mixed reality is also that. Imo. It sounds the same to me too.

The whole thing is like hand gesture control. It looked great in minority report, but we had it since one of the 2010s xboxs and it went absolutely nowhere.