xREZ Lab’s team on user experience in virtual reality published their third paper, “From Being There to Feeling Real: The Effect of Real World Expertise on Presence in Virtual Environments” at The Electronic Imaging Symposium’s Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality (ERVR) 2018 conference, held January 28th – February 2nd in Burlingame, California.

Building on previous research, the paper introduces three variables, expertise in real-world activities, interaction ability, and the virtual hand ownership illusion, to expand on the relationship between presence and user experience in virtual environments. Using a rock climbing VR environment to gauge user experience, the study ultimately discovers a relationship between real-world expertise and related activity in virtual environments.

Citation: Parola MJ., West R., Herrington R., Adams C., Beyer M., Davis B., Hays K. Hillard L., Kajihara M., Khoja Z., Lane B., Ligon N., Poyser D., Thyagarajan G., Starkweather J. (2018) From Being There to Feeling Real: The Effect of Real World Expertise on Presence in Virtual Environments. Electronic Imaging Proceedings of Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality.

ERVR 2018 Proceeding: https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2470-1173.2018.03.ERVR-434