anthony_steedOne of the gold standards of a VR experience is being able to achieve Presence, but Presence is an elusive concept to precisely define. Mel Slater is one of the leading researchers into Presence and says that it’s a combination of the ‘Place Illusion’ and ‘Presence Illusion’, which Richard Skarbez elaborates by saying that the Place Illusion represents the degree of immersion that you feel by being transported to another place, and the Plausibility Illusion is the degree to which you feel that that the overall scene matches your expectations for coherence.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

Anthony Steed is a professor in the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group in the Department of Computer Science, University College London. I had a chance to catch up with Anthony at the IEEE VR conference where he talks about doing distributed Presence research with a Gear VR, the role of plausibility in Presence, how social Presence fits into Mel’s two illusions of Presence, and some of the discussions about sharing knowledge between game developers and academics that happened at GDC and IEEE VR conferences this year.

brendan-iribe-oculus-presense
See Also: Oculus Shares 5 Key Ingredients for Presence in Virtual Reality

Anthony studied under Mel Slater, and he was a co-author of one of the major Presence surveys referred to as the Slater, Usoh & Steed survey in the “Depth of Presence in Virtual Environments” paper. Anthony was also the winner of the 2016 Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award presented at the IEEE VR conference this year.

Here’s a video of the Presence Experiment that Anthony conducted on the Gear VR, and where he found that tapping on your body during the music without having your hands tracked had a negative impact on embodiment.

Here’s the 2015 IEEE VR poster from Richard Skarbez talking about his Presence research into the Place Illusion and Plausibility Illusion:

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Kent Bye
  • Bryan Ischo

    For anyone who hasn’t ever listened to one, these podcasts are truly awesome. I feel like someday people are going to be able to look back at the birth of consumer VR and find a well documented treasure trove of information describing how the theory and practice of VR evolved from the outset thanks to these podcasts. They are also great for those of us in the present because they give very good visions for what VR will be like going forward in our lifetimes.

    I haven’t listened to nearly as many as I would like to have, and I’m a little surprised to find that this one is from an event in March, which in this industry almost makes it seem immediately out of date, but still … an interesting listen.