A Comparative Study of Sense of Presence of Virtual Reality and Immersive Environments

The study of sense of presence experienced in virtual reality environments has become an important area of research. The continued advancement of immersive technology offers more opportunities to examine how a subject becomes immersed in and interacts with a variety of virtual environments. The primary purpose of this research is to study the sense of presence while interacting with a traditional Virtual Reality Environment (Helmet-based system with a Head-tracking device) and compare it with a virtual reality environment using an Immersive Environment (Spherical-based Visualization environment). Two empirical experiments were investigated in this study, each consisting of thirty-five subjects. A virtual airplane scenario was created and simulated for the participants of both environments. Participants were given several questionnaires after completing the simulation. This study mainly focused on question 9 and 10 of that survey, which dealt with how much the participant felt present in the virtual environment, and if the presence of the real world could still be experienced while in the virtual environment. We found that the subjects felt more involved with the virtual environment while using the Immersive Environment simulation versus using the traditional helmet-based Virtual Reality Environment. There was a statistically significant difference in questions 9 and 10 between the Immersive Environment and traditional Virtual Reality Environment when those questions are considered in isolation. However there was not a significant difference in the total sense of presence between the two environments after analyzing the questions together. The primary differences between the questions were analyzed using the overall mean and the standard deviation. The Immersive Environment has a smaller deviation than the traditional Virtual Reality Environment, implying that the sense of presence response is more concentrated. However, the overall results demonstrate that both environments are almost equally effective, with the Immersive Environment having several slight advantages.