Although it is the focus of a growing number of scholars in communication, computer science, psychology, and cognitive science, there is little agreement concerning the nature and measurement of presence. Marvin Minsky (1980) used the term "telepresence " to refer to teleoperation technology that provides the user with a "remote presence " in a different location via feedback systems that allow her to "see and feel what is happening " there. In 1991, the term was adapted and shortened when the journal Presence (MIT Press) was founded to provide a forum for "current research and advanced ideas on teleoperators and virtual environments. " By 1997 a review, by Lombard and Ditton identified six different conceptualizations of presence in a diverse set of literatures: presence as social richness (the "warmth " or "intimacy " possible via a medium), realism (perceptual and/or social), transportation (the sensations of "you are there, " "it is here, " and/or "we are together"), immersion (in a mediated environment), social actor within medium (e.g., parasocial interaction), and medium as social actor (e.g., treating computers as social entities). The authors incorporated all of these conceptualizations of presence into a single definition: "the perceptual illusion of nonmediation. " The term "perceptual " indicates that this phenomenon involves continuous (real time) responses of the human sensory, cognitive, and affective processing systems to objects and entities in a person's environment. An "illusion of nonmediation " occurs when a

This paper will examine the dangers of attempting to measure the `presence' of a VR system as a one-dimensional parameter. The question of whether presence is a valid measure of a VR system will also be addressed

Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there

5.1 surround sound productions and broadcasts have become popular in Japan, and NHK has developed a 22.2 multichannel sound system for ultra-high definition video. While two-dimensional or threedimensional sound reproduction is possible with these multichannel sound systems, the production of contents is more complicated and time-consuming than in two channel stereo production. In productions using a conventional surround sound mixing tool, in particular, much time is needed for creating two-dimensional sound effects. Therefore, an integrated surround panning system was developed to enable various surround sound effects to be created easily. This paper introduces the newly developed integrated surround sound panning system, which has innovative functions such as a distance control and an integrated sound source movement control, and discusses various issues concerning multichannel sound production.

For the goal of designing a wearable low vision aid, aspects of both head-mounted display (HMD) design and performance evaluation were integrated into a single study of scanning ability. A head-mounted version of a novel retinal light scanning display known as the virtual retinal display was fabricated for this study. A remote head CCD (charge coupled device) attached approximately at the user’s line of sight was used as the input source. Scanning ability was quantified as the time to identify a target in a wide field of distractors while using the HMD design in four different display interface modes (DIMs). Each DIM was tested with respect to their corresponding controls: A (augmented, see-through) and CO (center occluded) DIMs were compared to the augmented control (augmented, retinal display turned off), and CPO (center and periphery occluded) and PO (periphery occluded) DIMs were compared to the periphery occluded control (periphery obstructed, retinal display turned off). Each DIM was tested at high, medium, and low contrast levels. Five subjects were tested without optical correction (visual acuity worse than 20/200), which accurately represented low vision subjects. Results showed that for each DIM, scanning performance decreased as the contrast level decreased. At the We thank Nick Kipping (student in Industrial Design) and Robert Burstein (Research Engineer) for their technical assistance, Duff Hendrickson (Experience Designer) for the computer animations, The National Science Foundation for funding this research (Grants 9801294 & 9978888), the R.E.U. program,

Abstract: Our research aims to develop a more transparent interface for virtual reality environments, an interface designed to read subconscious input from the user as well as player choices. Such an interface offers new possibilities for interactive fiction by enabling fictional “interior ” experiences, something previously not thought possible with virtual reality. This paper is a report on a human subject study using heart rate and galvanic skin response to test the viability of adding biofeedback to the interface of a VR fiction experience for games. Using a test design based on video clips, we found that galvanic skin response measurement was suitably sensitive and that the system could learn over time. The overall goal of the prototype VRE we are working on, Memesis, i is to create a game that can be played in CAVEs or mini-CAVE installations in public places or at

Virtual reality is often used to simulate environments in which the direction of up is not aligned with the normal direction of gravity or the body. What is the effect of such an environment on the perceived direction of up? In earlier work (e.g. [8]) we examined the effect of a widefield virtual environment on the perceived up direction under different simulations of tilt (rotation around the naso-occipital axis). Here we extend this earlier work by examining the influence of a wide-field virtual environment on the perceived direction of up under different simulations of pitch (rotation around the interaural axis). Subjects sat in a virtual room simulated using an immersive projective display system. The room could be pitched about an axis passing through the subjects’ head. Subjects indicted their perceived direction of up by adjusting the orientation of an indicator until it aligned with the perceived direction of gravity. Subjects ’ judgments indicated that for physically upright subjects the visual display is an important factor in determining the perceived up direction. However as was found to be the case for roll simulations, this technique for influencing a subject’s perceived direction of up is most effective for pitch rotations within approximately ±35° of true gravitational vertical.