Ontology of Augmented Reality

Introduction. The purpose of the paper is to justify the possibility of developing ontology of augmented reality as a special sphere of social space. A comparative analysis of approaches to the interpretation of reality in philosophy and theoretical sociology is carried out. The original provisions of the conceptual model of social reality and social actuality have been formulated. The concepts of actual and virtual social actions are introduced and analyzed.Methodology and sources. The main provisions of phenomenological sociology are used as the methodological basis of the study: A. Schutz's interpretation of social reality as a fragment of being translated into the world of intersubjective, and P. Berger and T. Luckmann's characterization of the reality of society as a process of its construction in practical activities. The features of augmented reality, revealed in the works of R. Azuma, P. Milgram, A. F. Kishino, H. Papagiannis, A. M. Larsen, S. A. Glazkova, O. N. Kislova and other researchers, are taken into account. Descriptions of the characteristics of augmented reality devices are derived from reports from research center heads: the descriptions of the characteristics of augmented reality devices are derived from reports from the heads of research centers involved in the development and implementation of digital technologies: universities in London, Tokio and Toronto, Hasso-Plattner Institute in Germany, Finnish company Senseg, company Disney Research, company High Fidelity, MIT self-assembly labs, MIT Media Lab Group, San Francisco-based Detour startup, Google and Microsoft etc.Results and discussion. The environment shaped by augmented reality is much more complex than it is in its immediate perception. It includes four spaces: 1) subject world, 2) the mental world and 3) the hybrid world as a symbiosis of real and imaginary worlds, or 4) symbiosis of real-world fragments – torn in space and time and combined with technology in devices that give the individual's ability to be present when observing their combined existence.Conclusion. Augmented reality complicates virtual reality, adding to its content in addition to fictional characteristics the content of practical actions. Augmented reality, using the virtual reality resource, becomes reality as the basis of practice. Augmented reality not only “begets” the world, but is in direct practical contact with it, thus becoming a special side of social reality