The dichotomy of presence elements: the where and what

Abstract

One of the goals and defining characteristics of virtual reality systems is to create "presence" and fool the user into believing that one is, or is doing something "in" the synthetic environment. Most research and papers on presence to date have been directed toward coming up with the definitions of presence, and based on them, identifying key elements that affect presence. We carried out an elaborate experiment in which presence levels were measured (with subjective questionnaire) in test virtual worlds configured with different combinations of six visual presence elements.