Is the subjective feel of “presence” an uninteresting goal?
Section snippets
Photorealism and non-photorealism
The development of realism in computer graphics and of virtual reality represents an important challenge for computer science. This effort in computer science raises a number of questions related to the challenge of creating increasingly realistic environments and of establishing a naturalistic interaction with computer mediated situations. Perceptual studies, cognitive sciences and philosophy are sometimes invoked both because of the feedback of these developments onto the analysis of human
Presence: perception and interaction
Different authors conceive Presence as a subjective feeling and as a multidimensional construct. As a subjective feeling, Presence is construed as the private sensation of the user of “being there” in the virtual environment, which overcomes the impression of being in a laboratory room, facing a computer screen or a virtual reality device.
“Presence is defined as the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another” [5, p. 225].
The
Object perception. The non-necessity of the complete-stimulus situation
Let us consider a first case of object perception. I’m looking at my cat; the cat is in the garden, behind the fence. Even if I don’t see all of the body of my cat, the cat is somehow present in front of me as a complete animal, and not as a strange combination of disconnected segments of a cat, separated by pieces of wood. Besides, even when the cat is in front of the fence, I see it as a complete cat, not as a cat-like convex and furry surface with no interior and no backside.
This is an
Perceptual mechanisms of simplification and integration. Complete stimulation is not sufficient
It is important to know, and to be ready to exploit, the mechanisms of perceptual integration and simplification. In natural conditions, in fact, the perceptual system has to deal with a great wealth of information of different kinds. In the case of a moving object, for example a red toy car, which is moved along a racing circuit, information about the trajectory and velocity has to be calculated, and information from the visual, kinaesthetic, tactile, and even auditory stimuli has to be
The lesson of ordinary pictures
If Presence is not only a technologically hard but possibly also an unnecessary goal, what lessons could be drawn about the design of interfaces for handling virtual realities? Should we just give up the quest for complex interfaces?
Not so quickly. Over and above photorealism there are other interesting directions in which one may want to look. Consider ordinary static 2D pictures, such as dinner-party photographs or drawings. When looking at a picture we have the feeling that the depicted
Conclusions
We have suggested that the question of Presence in virtual environments should not be faced as an attempt to just reproduce or enhance the subjective feeling of the user of being translated in another situation. We have suggested to tackle the problem of presence by establishing a wider spectrum of conditions that make a virtual object present to the user of a virtual environment. In order to avoid confusion, we prefer to maintain the use of the term ‘presence’ for the subjective feeling of
Acknowledgements
Reserach for this paper was partly funded by the European Commission 6th PCRD Network of Excellence “Enactive interfaces”. Elena Pasquinelli's work was further funded by Percro lab. Elena Pasquinelli would like to thank researchers of Percro lab for enriching discussions and for the possibility of testing virtual reality systems and haptic devices.
References (26)
- et al.
The reviewing of object files: object-specific integration of information
Cognitive Psychology
(1992) - et al.
Trajectory determines movement dynamics
Neuroscience
(1982) - M. Gutierrez, D. Thalmann, F. Vexo, Semantic virtual environments with adaptive multimodal interfaces, 11th...
- et al.
An artificial life environment for autonomous virtual agents with multi-sensorial and multi-perceptive features
Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds
(2004) - et al.
Computer graphics and animation
Computer Physics Report
(1989) - et al.
Non Photorealistic Computer Graphics: Modeling, Rendering and Animation
(2002) - et al.
Measuring presence in virtual environments: a presence questionnaire
Presence
(1998) - et al.
At the hearth of it all: the concept of Presence
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
(1997) - et al.
Being there: the experience of presence in mediated environments
- et al.
Real presence: how different ontologies generate different criteria for presence, telepresence, and virtual presence
Presence
(1999)
Presence in the past: what can we learn from media history?
Information Arts
Cited by (20)
A Proposed Hybridized Model for Image-Based Virtual Reality in Technology-Driven Self-Therapy
2023, Journal of Advanced Research in Applied Sciences and Engineering TechnologyTowards an ontology of virtual environments: A critical account
2023, Aisthesis (Italy)Beyond Being Real: A Sensorimotor Control Perspective on Interactions in Virtual Reality
2022, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - ProceedingsThe Multisensory Brain at Sailing
2022, Studies in Brain and MindFrom Illusions to Beyond-Real Interactions in Virtual Reality
2021, Adjunct Publication of the 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2021