Measuring presence in virtual environments

Abstract

This demonstration presents findings from two studies on presence that use a new technology for developing photorealistic virtual environments. Our studies have used a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures, and in doing so have pointed to the importance of exploring place as part of presence. The demonstration explores issues of presence in such environments and the range of data capture methods we used and methodological issues found.

From immersion to intention? Exploring advances in prosocial storytelling

“…Key findings from this work contribute to the literature and practice in numerous ways. First, participants who used HMDs felt substantially higher levels of presence—replicating recent research that suggest higher‐end story viewing technologies can be successfully used to help viewers feel as if they are in the environments of the stories (McCall, O'Neil, & Carroll, 2004; Fraustino, Lee, Lee, & Ahn, 2018). However, also consistent with recent research, these effects are limited to feeling present in the environments, and do not seem to have any impact on feeling more narratively engaged with the stories themselves (e.g., Bindman et al, 2018).…”

Web Engineering at the Frontier of the Web 2.0: Design Patterns for Online 3D Shared Spaces

“…In 3D applications, the interaction space contains the interface to contents and functions, but is also a "place" per se, for experiencing the sense of self, of remote "others" who are synchronously there with you, and of the digital environment. This idea is captured by the concept of presence, in its multiple declinations [19,35,46,53,59,74,80,81,92,94,95].…”

“…HCI researchers and VR designers have tended to focus on personal (physical) presence [81,92], trying to identify design features of virtual worlds that might contribute to convincing someone that s/he is "there". Several works also exist addressing environmental and social presence [19,35,53,59,74,94,95]. It is interesting to observe that, even if most of existing researches on social presence focus on 3D (immersive or not) spaces, a number of works explore this concept also in the design of more conventional Web 2.0 applications, e.g., video or photo sharing [16,24,52,68] and social-networking systems [25]; they investigate the benefits of the subjective sense of togetherness, of an unfolding social union with remote others on the quality for the experience and the design features that contribute to social presence.…”

Spatial Information Theory

“…Within geographic discourses, the notion of 'sense of place' has been proposed as a concept that, in general terms, means an 'awareness of one's natural environment' but also is crucially linked (especially in phenomenological conceptualisations) to determine the meanings and formation of place. Experiments in virtual environments have started to focus on creating places with 'sense of place' by including people's experiences and meanings in virtual landscapes (McCall et al 2004), where presence or 'being there' is employed as one of the measures for 'sense of place' and the emphasis is on the immersive, embodied nature of 'sense of place'. While 'sense of place' is proposed as a localised individual notion in theories by Tuan (1977Tuan ( , 1990 and Relph (1976), it also emerges as a global notion in Massey (1993), where 'sense of place' is not regarded as nostalgic but progressive, with places continuously evolving as 'articulated moments in networks of social relations and understanding' (Massey 1993:66).…”