Buzzword Decoder: “Presence” in Virtual Reality

July 12, 2017

What makes virtual reality work?

The experience is predicated on the idea that it feelsreal: Participants are immersed in a virtual place, whether a game, a roomwhere a simulation or role-play is occurring, or a re-created or completelyimagined location. For participants to feel that they are actually in thatenvironment, the VR application must create what is called “presence.” What does presence entail?

Creatingpresence requires immersion—an environment that surrounds the participant.While 360-degree photos or video surround a viewer, an immersive environment isdifferent in that it moves along with the person. When viewing a 360-degreeimage of a residential street, for example, the viewer cannot walk down thestreet or around the corner. She cannot go up a driveway and knock on the doorof a house. In a VR environment, the participant can do these things.
A virtualreality environment is interactive in a way that 360-degree video is not.When viewing a 360-degree video of a coral reef, for example, the viewer couldwatch a school of fish swim by. In an immersive VR environment, the participantcould pick up a rock, peer around the back of a plant or coral, and even swimalongside that school of fish.
Soundsmust “behave” in the virtual environment as they would in a real environment.That means that they become louder or softer if the participant approaches orretreats, they bounce off items like walls or rocks, and they become muffled ifthe participant is underwater, for instance.
Participantsmust feel as if they have entered the environment. Since their physicalbodies cannot enter the virtual environment, they take on an avatar and movethrough the environment in the avatar’s body. An avatar can look like theparticipant; alternatively, the avatar can be a recognizable human of adifferent sex or race, an animal or normally inanimate object, or a completelyfantastic imaginary being.
Movingthrough a virtual environment must also feel real. Particularly in VRsetups where participants are seated, the sensation of moving through thevirtual environment when a participant’s physical body is stationary can cause thatparticipant to feel nausea or other symptoms of motion sickness. Developers areexperimenting with tools and techniques to minimize the “disconnect” betweenthe feeling of moving through an environment and the simultaneous physicalexperience of the body.
While inthe virtual environment, participants must be able to interact with othercharacters, whether they are avatars for other participants or completelyimagined characters, as in a game or simulation.

How good does it have to be?

Presence is a complex combination of learner participationand environmental effects. The physical appearance of a virtual environment andthe objects and characters populating it make up only a small part of the virtualreality experience. It’s possible to create presence in an environment wherethe computer-generated graphics look like animations or drawings; true-to-life renderingis not essential. But the combination of effects must convince participants’brains that they are in the environment.

Some developers are working to create virtual environmentswith tactile or sensory effects like wind, scents, vibration, and lightingchanges. In many VR setups, participants hold controls or wear anklets thathelp guide or render their movement in the environment; in all cases,participants wear headsets that prevent them from seeing anything outside thevirtual environment. Some VR participants don “haptic suits” that convey agreater range of sensory feedback than a headset alone, or a headset plus handcontrols, can manage. These suits or vests might be able to convey temperaturechanges, smells, and sensations of touch, wind, or water, and some delivervibration or mild electric pulses.

Achieving presence requires the willing participation of thelearner; a participant must suspend disbelief—that is, believe, at least whileimmersed in the environment, that impossible and illogical things areplausible.

Even with all the elements lined up—a willing participant, agreat virtual environment, the best headset, an engaging story—the virtualexperience can be derailed by faulty technology. A fraction of a second’sglitch in rendering the environment as the participant moves through it, amisalignment of sound, an interaction with a character that misses the mark—andit’s all over. Presence is destroyed as the participant’s brain snaps back intothe real world.

Want to learn more about presence?

Join us at 2017 Realities360 Conference in San Jose, California, July 26 – 28. There you’llfind dozens of sessions on virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, including: