A question about VR and AR Options

[DracoBlue]

I'll start out by admitting I'm new to the game. I've picked up the 4th Edition revised book and am gradually making my way through it, so it's possible I've overlooked the answer to my question in the book, or that I haven't got there yet. If so, feel free to point me to a page where I can read it for myself. I've found that the book has a lot of little rules tucked away in less-than-obvious places sometimes.

I am having trouble wrapping my head around how people access AR and VR and how commlinks work.

This is my understanding from what I've read so far:
1. a comm is essentially a tricked out smartphone. While it can be hard-wired to you, that isn't necessarily the case.
2. AR and VR are really only accessible only if you have the right (audio & visual) accessories (eg. cybereyes, glasses, etc.)

So my questions are thus: If your comm isn't hardwired to you and you don't feel like walking around with glasses on (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) to check out all the AROs and whatnot, are you basically stuck to surfing the Matrix on your comm like on a modern smartphone? What if you want to access VR? Is that even possible with only a commlink? How common are these things to everyday people or corp employees vs. runners?

How does it all work?? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif)