I've been working on VR and AR stuff for about 8 years now. I started doing it full time about 4 years ago. A lot of what I know has been from just being in the zeitgeist as things develop, so unfortunately I don't have a "reading list" to get people started.

I have been trying to start a reading list, but it's woefully incomplete. I'll copy the content here (I don't have it publicly online yet). I'm primarily centered on VR, but I've also done a lot of AR work. I think good application design is very similar in both. or rather, all the "bad" apps I talked about out there are similarly bad in the failure to take the immersiveness of the experience into account. But I do think there is a lot of overlap in terms of needing to take less of a traditional, compartmentalized application mindset and start thinking about immersive software as more akin to clothing, overlays on top of the world.

Kent Bye's "Voices of VR" Podcast (Site: https://voicesofvr.com/, Twitter: https://twitter.com/kentbye?s=20). Kent Bye has been a singular voice in the VR and AR community for the entirety of the contemporary VR movement. He brings a philosophy and social impact perspective. I think a lot of application design--immersive or otherwise--doesn't take human factors into account often enough.

Road to VR (Site: https://www.roadtovr.com/, Twitter: https://twitter.com/RtoVR?s=20) is also a very long-standing blog on all things AR and VR. They are more focused on gaming, but they also cover industry trends, new hardware, and companies

John Palmer has a few blog posts covering spatial interfaces that are very insightful (https://darkblueheaven.com/)
https://darkblueheaven.com/spatialinterfaces/
https://darkblueheaven.com/spatialsoftware/

This Medium post by Douglas Rushkoff talks about some of the problems with digital media, which I believe VR can help solve (https://medium.com/team-human/digital-media-still-isnt-very-...)

Jaron Lanier is one of the "fathers" of VR, part of the "first-wave" of VR work in the late-80s/early-90s. The Verge did an excellent interview with him (https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/8/16751596/jaron-lanier-daw...). You can get to his books from his website (http://www.jaronlanier.com/), which are all excellent treatises on humanity's relationship to technology.

Incidentally, here's Kent Bye interviewing Jaron Lanier (http://voicesofvr.com/600-jaron-laniers-journey-into-vr-dawn...)

Liv Erickson has an excellent blog on technology that covers a lot of issues in VR, accessibility, and machine learning (https://livierickson.com/blog/). In particular, "6 Questions to Ask Before Diving Into VR Development" is great primer on VR concepts (https://livierickson.com/blog/6-questions-to-ask-before-divi...)

Tom Forsyth (Twitter: https://twitter.com/tom_forsyth) has an excellent blog post about different technical aspects of the optics in VR systems (http://tomforsyth1000.github.io/blog.wiki.html#%5B%5BVR%20op...)

Jesse Schell's article "Making Great VR: Six Lessons Learned From I Expect You To Die" is a little old but still excellent (https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/)

This is an excellent article on the importance of audio in immersive applications (https://arinsider.co/2019/10/02/sound-ars-unsung-modality/)

This is an interesting video made by a man who spent a whole week in VR, eating, sleeping, working, and living with a VR headset on 24/7 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGRY14znFxY)