Keywords

Virtual Environments, Virtual Reality, Presence

Abstract

One of the oft cited reasons for virtual environments is that they provide experiences with places one would never be able to visit and to perform tasks that would otherwise be dangerous, or inaccessible. The ability to become transported to another environment, such that you think you are "there," is known as presence. Existing presence literature focuses largely on the sensory aspects of virtual environment experiences. However, there is more to experience than what is sensed. This dissertation investigates the theoretical components of holistic experiences in virtual environments. In order to explore the relationship between experiential design and presence, a new evaluation tool was needed. This ultimately led to the development of the Virtual Experience Test. To validate the Virtual Experience Test, an experiment was designed that utilized subjective evaluations regarding game-play in the commercial game Mirror's Edge. Measures of experiential design, flow, and presence were taken and the relationships between the measures analyzed. The results of this research showed that environments utilizing holistic designs result in significantly higher presence. Furthermore, this study produced a validated measure of holistic experience that designers could use to evaluate their virtual environments.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2009

Advisor

Goldiez, Brian

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Industrial Engineering and Management Systems

Degree Program

Modeling and Simulation

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0002779

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0002779

Language

English

Release Date

September 2009

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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Engineering Commons

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