What Factors Influence Perceptions of Presence?

Presence is a term used to describe the “feeling of being there” in a virtual environment. It can be cognitive, in that the user’s mind is engaged in the virtual content, or it can be perceptual, in that the user’s sensory systems perceive the virtual environment to be “real.” In Augmented Reality (AR), this is represented by a seamless integration between the physical and virtual worlds.

A question that arises in this area of research is what factors of the virtual environment influence the perceptions of presence? Is there a minimum amount of virtual information needed in an AR environment? Does the level of fidelity of the virtual elements influence the reported experience of presence? For example, will an application that uses realistic 3D models result in higher levels of presence than lower fidelity (i.e., cartoon) 3D models?

In VR worlds, the user is immersed into a completely virtual world, so presence is likely to be experienced if the application is successfully implemented. In AR environments, users are exposed to virtual elements in addition to their physical surroundings. If a user has to switch their attention between the two worlds to complete a task, the result can be disruptive and/or fatiguing due to the lack of presence. If the user can complete the task as if the virtual elements are part of the physical world, the result is a seamless, productive experience that includes presence. It also is possible that lower fidelity serves as a distraction to the user, which may result in breaks in immersion and a reminder of the artifical nature of the virtual world. This could, in turn, impact their sense of presence.

A practical example of this issue is with the use of avatars in collaborative environments. How is presence affected by the appearance and customization of the avatars? If a user pays attention to a particular feature or abnormality due to low fidelity rendering, it may impact their ability to perform the task at hand. Another example may be dynamic elements in the virtual world, such as a bouncing ball or a spinning tire. How distinguishable, in appearance and in behavior, the object is from its physical counterpart may influence the level of reported presence.

The main research question in this area is “How much virtual information of what fidelity is necessary in an AR environment to produce a sense of presence?” This question is of interest at both ends of the quantity spectrum — how much is enough, and how much is too much? Too little and the user will not experience presence; too much and the user may become so immersed in the virtual elements that awareness of the physical world may be compromised.

This research topic involves the examination of AR environments with differing amounts of virtual elements at different levels of fidelity and the measurement of presence among users.

Stakeholders

Developers, users, operators, users of collaborative virtual environments # Position on X and Y axes (1-5)

Possible Methodologies

Presence tends to be a self-reported measure assessed by means of a questionnaire. Physiological measures also may be explored to correlate with reported presence, engagement, and satisfaction. These measures could be systematically compared across environments of varying complexity in terms of number of virtual stimuli for a variety of tasks.

Research Program

This topic is related to other proposed AREA Research Agenda topics on display technology and user perceptions and satisfaction.

Miscellaneous Notes

An interesting article related to the amount of physical space in which AR application is used can be found here.

Keywords

Presence, immersion, awareness, realism, cognitive tunneling, mental workload, seamless experience, high fidelity, low fidelity, realism, avatars, object interaction, display technology, presence, interactive computer graphics, user experience, cognitive systems, sensory perception, avatars, computer graphics, color computer graphics, holographic displays, animation, image quality

Research Agenda Categories

End User and User Experience, Industries, Technology

Expected Impact Timeframe

Medium

Related Publications

Using the words in this topic description and Natural Language Processing analysis of publications in the AREA FindAR database, the references below have the highest number of matches with this topic:

• Szczurowski, K., & Smith, M. (2017). Measuring presence: Hypothetical quantitative framework. 2017 23rd International Conference on Virtual System & Multimedia (VSMM).
• Koskela, T., Mazouzi, M., Alavesa, P., Pakanen, M., Minyaev, I., Paavola, E., & Tuliniemi, J. (2018). AVATAREX. Proceedings of the 9th Augmented Human International Conference.
• Rhee, T., Thompson, S., Medeiros, D., dos Anjos, R., & Chalmers, A. (2020). Augmented Virtual Teleportation for High-Fidelity Telecollaboration. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 26(5), 1923-1933.
• Merenda, C., Suga, C., Gabbard, J. L., & Misu, T. (2019). Effects of “Real-World” Visual Fidelity on AR Interface Assessment: A Case Study Using AR Head-up Display Graphics in Driving. 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR).
• Poretski, L., Arazy, O., Lanir, J., Shahar, S., & Nov, O. (2019). Virtual Objects in the Physical World. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

More publications can be explored using the AREA FindAR research tool.

Author

ERAU Team

Last Published (yyyy-mm-dd)

2021-08-31

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