A Separate Reality: An Update on Place Illusion and Plausibility in Virtual Reality

We review the concept of presence in virtual reality, normally thought of as the sense of “being there” in the virtual world. We argued in a 2009 paper that presence consists of two orthogonal illusions that we refer to as Place Illusion (PI, the illusion of being in the place depicted by the VR) and Plausibility (Psi, the illusion that the virtual situations and events are really happening). Both are with the proviso that the participant in the virtual reality knows for sure that these are illusions. Presence (PI and Psi) together with the illusion of ownership over the virtual body that self-represents the participant, are the three key illusions of virtual reality. Copresence, togetherness with others in…

• MD
  Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación

  Awards: 10.13039, 501100011033, AEI/10
• AE
  Agencia Estatal de Investigación

  Awards: 501100011033, 13039, 10.13039, AEI/10, AEI/10.