Depth of Presence in Virtual Environments

Abstract

This paper describes a study to assess the influence of a variety of factors on reported level of presence in immersive virtual environments. It introduces the idea of “stacking depth,” that is, where a participant can simulate the process of entering the virtual environment while already in such an environment, which can be repeated to several levels of depth. An experimental study including 24 subjects was carried out. Half of the subjects were transported between environments by using virtual head-mounted displays, and the other half by going through doors. Three other binary factors were whether or not gravity operated, whether or not the subject experienced a virtual precipice, and whether or not the subject was followed around by a virtual actor. Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic representation systems and egocentric/exocentric perceptual positions were assessed by a preexperiment questionnaire. Presence was assessed by the subjects as their sense of “being there,” the extent to which they experienced the virtual environments as more the presenting reality than the real world in which the experiment was taking place, and the extent to which the subject experienced the virtual environments as places visited rather than images seen. A logistic regression analysis revealed that subjective reporting of presence was significantly positively associated with visual and kinesthetic representation systems, and negatively with the auditory system. This was not surprising since the virtual reality system used was primarily visual. The analysis also showed a significant and positive association with stacking level depth for those who were transported between environments by using the virtual HMD, and a negative association for those who were transported through doors. Finally, four of the subjects moved their real left arm to match movement of the left arm of the virtual body displayed by the system. These four scored significantly higher on the kinesthetic representation system than the remainder of the subjects.

The Influence of Dynamic Shadows on Presence in Immersive Virtual Environments

“…Faced with conflicting information from two senses, the resulting action is likely to depend on which sensory system is "dominant". In previous work [9,10] we have explored the relationship between dominant representation systems and the extent of subjective presence, and have always found a very strong relationship. This is based on the idea that people differ in the extent to which they require visual, auditory or kinesthetic/tactile information in order to construct their world models, and that each person may have a general tendency to prefer one type of representation (say visual) over another (say auditory).…”

“…In this shadow experiment therefore we employed an updated version of the questionnaire we used in [10] which is given to the subjects before attending the experimental session. This questionnaire attempts to elicit their preferences regarding visual, auditory and kinesthetic modes of thinking.…”

The role of mismatches in the sensory feedback provided to indicate selection within a virtual environment

“…Presence was measured via three items extracted from the Slater-Usoh-Steed (SUS) questionnaire [37] (see Appendix I). Answers to this questionnaire are anchored in a seven Likert scale and were operationalized computing the number of items rated over 5.…”

Design for Social Presence in Online Communities: A Multidimensional Approach

“…Two types of presence are identified, i.e., physical presence and social presence. Physical presence, also known as spatial presence or telepresence, describes the illusion of being physically present in the setting simulated by the medium (Lombard and Ditton, 1997;Slater et al, 1994;Venkatesh and Johnson, 2002). Social presence, on the other hand, is conceptualized as the inherent property of media, refers to the feeling of "being with another" or the degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships .…”