The fact that a socially acceptable extended reality (XR) must not only represent virtual elements, but also remove real elements from their users’ perception, just as an ad blocker filters adverts, has been given far too little attention to date. Diminished Reality is a form of XR that is dedicated to precisely this goal: removing unwanted, superfluous or harmful elements from perception.

With DiminishAR, JangHyeon Lee and Lawrence H. Kim have developed an application for the HoloLens that makes distracting objects such as smartphones virtually ‘invisible’ and trialled this application in a study. I am pleased to report that they explicitly consider their techniques to be suitable for Spatial AR and Societal XR. In their analysis of potential applications they assume that their techniques could contribute to Societal XR, for example, by minimising distractions in communal spaces such as open offices, libraries, and classrooms.