“Simulating virtual environments within virtual environments as the basis for a psychophysics of presence” by Slater, Spanlang and Corominas

A new definition of immersion with respect to virtual environment (VE) systems has been proposed in earlier work, based on the concept of simulation. One system (A) is said to be more immersive than another (B) if A can be used to simulate an application as if it were running on B. Here we show how this concept can be used as the basis for a psychophysics of presence in VEs, the sensation of being in the place depicted by the virtual environment displays (Place Illusion, PI), and also the illusion that events occurring in the virtual environment are real (Plausibility Illusion, Psi). The new methodology involves matching experiments akin to those in color science. Twenty participants first experienced PI or Psi in the initial highest level immersive system, and then in 5 different trials chose transitions from lower to higher order systems and declared a match whenever they felt the same level of PI or Psi as they had in the initial system. In each transition they could change the type of illumination model used, or the field-of-view, or the display type (powerwall or HMD) or the extent of self-representation by an avatar. The results showed that the 10 participants instructed to choose transitions to attain a level of PI corresponding to that in the initial system tended to first choose a wide field-of-view and head-mounted display, and then ensure that they had a virtual body that moved as they did. The other 10 in the Psi group concentrated far more on achieving a higher level of illumination realism, although having a virtual body representation was important for both groups. This methodology is offered as a way forward in the evaluation of the responses of people to immersive virtual environments, a unified theory and methodology for psychophysical measurement.

1. Brooks, F. P. 1999. What’s real about virtual reality? IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 19, 6, 16–27. Google ScholarDigital Library
2. Carrozzino, M., Tecchia, F., Bacinelli, S., Cappelletti, C., and Bergamasco, M. 2005. Lowering the development time of multimodal interactive application: the real-life experience of the XVR project. In Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology, 270–273. Google ScholarDigital Library
3. Draper, J. V., Kaber, D. B., and Usher, J. M. 1998. Telepresence. Human Factors 40, 3, 354–375.Google ScholarCross Ref
4. Fairchild, M. D. 2005. Color Appearance Models 2nd Ed.,. Wiley-IS&T, Chichester, UK.Google Scholar
5. Fernando, R. 2005. Percentage-closer soft shadows. In SIGGRAPH ’05: ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Sketches, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 35. Google ScholarDigital Library
6. Freeman, J., Avons, S. E., Pearson, D. E., and IJsselsteijn, W. A. 1999. Effects of sensory information and prior experience on direct subjective ratings of presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 8, 1, 1–13. Google ScholarDigital Library
7. Garau, M., Friedman, D., Widenfeld, H. R., Antley, A., Brogni, A., and Slater, M. 2008. Temporal and spatial variations in presence: Qualitative analysis of interviews from an experiment on breaks in presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 17, 3, 293–309. Google ScholarDigital Library
8. Gardner, H. J., and Martin, M. A. 2007. Analyzing ordinal scales in studies of virtual environments: Likert or lump it! Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 16, 4, 439–446. Google ScholarDigital Library
9. Gillies, M., and Spanlang, B. 2010. Real-time character engines comparing and evaluating real-time character engines for virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, in press. Google ScholarDigital Library
10. Held, R. M., and Durlach, N. I. 1992. Telepresence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 1, 1, 109–112. Google ScholarDigital Library
11. Kilgard, M. 2000. Improving shadows and reflections via the stencil buffer. Tech. rep., NVIDIA.Google Scholar
12. Lessiter, J., Freeman, J., Keogh, E., and Davidoff, J. 2001. A cross-media presence questionnaire: The ITC-sense of presence inventory. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 10, 3, 282–297. Google ScholarDigital Library
13. Lombard, M., and Ditton, T. 1997. At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3, 2, online journal.Google Scholar
14. Meehan, M., Insko, B., Whitton, M., and Brooks, Jr., F. P. 2002. Physiological measures of presence in stressful virtual environments. ACM Transactions on Graphics 21, 3, 645–652. Google ScholarDigital Library
15. Meehan, M., Razzaque, S., Whitton, M. C., and Brooks, Jr., F. P. 2003. Effect of latency on presence in stressful virtual environments. In VR ’03: Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2003, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 141–148. Google ScholarDigital Library
16. Sanchez-Vives, M. V., and Slater, M. 2005. From presence to consciousness through virtual reality. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 6, 4, 332–339.Google ScholarCross Ref
17. Schubert, T., Friedmann, F., and Regenbrecht, H. 2001. The experience of presence: Factor analytic insights. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 10, 3, 266–282. Google ScholarDigital Library
18. Sheridan, T. 1992. Musings on telepresence and virtual presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 1, 1, 120–126. Google ScholarDigital Library
19. Slater, M., and Garau, M. 2007. The use of questionnaire data in presence studies: Do not seriously Likert. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 16, 4, 447–456. Google ScholarDigital Library
20. Slater, M., and Wilbur, S. 1997. A framework for immersive virtual environments (FIVE): speculations on the role of presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 6, 6, 603–617.Google ScholarDigital Library
21. Slater, M., Usoh, M., and Steed, A. 1994. Depth of presence in immersive virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 3, 2, 130–144. Depth of Presence in Immersive Virtual Environments xD;TY – JOUR.Google ScholarDigital Library
22. Slater, M., Antley, A., Davison, A., Swapp, D., Guger, C., Barker, C., Pistrang, N., and Sanchez-Vives, M. V. 2006. A virtual reprise of the stanley milgram obedience experiments. PLoS ONE 1 (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000039).Google Scholar
23. Slater, M., Khanna, P., Mortensen, J., and Yu, I. 2009. Visual realism enhances realistic response in an immersive virtual environment. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 29, 3, 76–84. Google ScholarDigital Library
24. Slater, M. 2004. How colorful was your day?: Why questionnaires cannot assess presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 13, 4, 484–493. Google ScholarDigital Library
25. Slater, M. 2009. Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 364, 1535 (Dec), 3549–3557.Google ScholarCross Ref
26. Taylor, II, R. M., Hudson, T. C., Seeger, A., Weber, H., Juliano, J., and Helser, A. T. 2001. VRPN: a device-independent, network-transparent vr peripheral system. In VRST ’01: Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 55–61. Google ScholarDigital Library
27. Usoh, M., Catena, E., Arman, S., and Slater, M. 2000. Using presence questionnaires in reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 9, 5, 497–503. Google ScholarDigital Library
28. Witmer, B. G., Jerome, C. J., and Singer, M. J. 2005. The factor structure of the presence questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 14, 3, 298–312. Google ScholarDigital Library
29. Zimmons, P., and Panter, A. 2003. The influence of rendering quality on presence and task performance in a virtual environment. In VR ’03: Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2003, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 293–293. Google ScholarDigital Library