Empirical Assessment of Presence and Immersion in Augmented and Virtual Realities

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Enrico Rukzio
• Subject Area: Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 425365472

The increasing use of immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) is accompanied by new challenges for industry and research. One of these challenges is the empirical evaluation of the quality of such technologies and applications. The strength of presence and immersion is often used to evaluate or compare approaches. Since these terms are subjective feelings, questionnaires are usually used to obtain a quantified evaluation criterion.In this proposal the current state of the art of the most frequently used questionnaires as well as definitions of the terms presence and immersion are discussed and their deficits are dealt with. It is shown that both, the definitions of the terms and the individual questionnaires differ greatly. Furthermore, it is argued that the most frequently used questionnaires have deficits in content and that their validity for measuring the respective constructs of presence and immersion has never been proven. Due to the divergence of the definitions and the resulting differences in the questionnaires, a comparative scientific process becomes impossible.The aim of the project is to create, validate and publish questionnaires which correspond to the current state of technology and its requirements. To this end, a detailed review of the current state of the art will first be carried out. The aim is to postulate uniform definitions of the terms presence and immersion on the basis of the knowledge gained. A first draft of possible definitions and delimitations of the terms is already discussed in the proposal. Based on this, lists of questions will be created which will be iteratively optimized and validated as questionnaires.The knowledge gained as well as the questionnaires should help to evaluate immersive technologies and applications more objectively and comparably.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants