How Long is Long Enough to Induce Immersion?

Abstract

In this paper, the immersiveness of three variations of spatial content was tested and compared. Content A is a high quality architectural visualization, which is characterized as purely spatial immersion. Content B is the best goal moments of real football games, which is mainly spatial immersion, with slight tactical immersion focus, compiled with mixed qualities. And content C is a high quality recorded virtual game animation, which is mainly spatial immersion, with slight emotional immersion focus. Each of the three spatial contents was cut into different lengths of 3 min, 7 min and 11 min. The participants report the ratings of their immersive experience on a 34-item questionnaire, after watching a combination of three media clips fully randomized in content types and durations, on a 10-inch tablet. Results show that overall, 7 min duration allows the users to feel significantly greater immersive experience than 3 min and 11 min durations for content A and content C. And for content B, 3 min duration stands out as the most immersive. Our study suggests that it is not the longer the more immersive, but there is an optimal duration for spatial immersion (around 7 min). After that, if there is not enough dramaturgical structure to sustain the audience interest, the immersiveness of the spatial content would significantly diminish (i.e. immersion turns into boredom). Our study also shows that realism factors also play a crucial role in inducing spatial immersion.