UKRI-funded Extended Reality (XR) Projects 2006-2024

This dataset was created to support the following publication: Black, Suzanne R., Sabrina Carter, Graham Hitchen, Gavin Inglis, Brendan Miles, Melissa Terras, and Frauke Zeller. 2025. ‘UK Innovation in Immersive XR Technologies for Screen, Performance and Digital Entertainment: UKRI Funding Trends and Insights (2006–2024)’. CoSTAR Foresight Lab. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15387420. This dataset contains details of 529 projects funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) between 2006 and 2024 related to Extended Realty (XR) for the purposes of screen, performance and digital entertainment. It was created from the UKRI Gateway to Research database (https://gtr.ukri.org/). All information is taken from that database, without further editing or correction, as of 6 November 2024. We defined a project as being in scope if it mentioned the use of developing immersive technologies for the purposes of screen, performance or digital entertainment or a direct application of immersive technologies for those purposes. Key search terms were used to search Gateway to Research to identify potentially relevant projects: “virtual reality”, “virtual production” OR VP, “extended reality” OR XR, immersive, “game engine” and “augmented reality”. For all of the projects returned using these key word searches the description of each project was checked by the research team to verify its relevance. Some of the projects extended to infrastructure, such as labs, facilities and research programmes, and some involved applications of XR technologies for a specific use case, such as the creation of a site-specific museum exhibit. For each relevant project identified, we collected data on 15 metrics, where available. These are: Date data collected, URL, Project title, Lead research org, Department name, Abstract, Organisations, People, Funder, Funded value, Start date, End date, Project category, Project reference, Research topic. We also added a column for project ID. It should be noted that Gateway to Research only contains data about UKRI-funded projects, and that other organisations also fund XR activity in the UK, such as Research England, Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Arts Council Wales, Digital Catapult, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Wellcome Trust as well as the higher education sector, and industry. Our dataset only contains UKRI funded projects and activities documented in UKRI Gateway to Research. Research ethics approval was obtained from Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. This research is part of the CoSTAR Foresight Lab’s activities, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/Y007433/1).

Black, S., & Carter, S. (2025). UKRI-funded Extended Reality (XR) Projects 2006-2024 [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15188609