Immersion?

Place Illusion & Plausibility . Realistic behaviour in Immersive Environments.

Mel Slater @ The Royal Society

? plausibility given by physical reality ( will need to check)

immersion as an illusion of physical reality.

• display in all sensory systems
  
• tracks head, neck, etc so that display is determined as a function of head tracking
  

immersive systems 

characterised by the sensori-motor contingencies that they support. ( KRO - ?need for synchrony) When these are satisfactory they give an illusion of physical reality.  It is difficult to turn off a strong illusion by knowing that it is an illusion.  The more you probe the more likely to break the effect of physical reality.

Once plausibility is broken then it is always broken (  if it is an illusion then is this part of the illusional effect?)

Place illusion

necessary to have self reference, contingent events, credibility.  Place illusion once broken can be reconstructed (  so what is the effect of illusion in this case?)

Illusions - Slater  makes reference to brain as a baysian self referencing system.

Carr, D., and Oliver, M. (in press 2009)

‘Second Life, Immersion and Learning’ in Social Computing and Virtual Communities, edited by Panayiotis Zaphiris and Chee Siang Ang, published by Taylor and Francis.

describes how the introduction of new technology eg voice into SL led to a classification into members as immersionist or augmentationists.

Immersionists - SL is a substitute for real life and tend to not disclose any real life information.  Augmentationist see SL as an extension of RL.

Reviewed use of immersion :

• mostly to imply a 3D environment
  
• but sometimes vaguely defined and 'yet assumed to be good for learning' 'Approached as something that can be measured'
  
• immersion as reality ? presence ( Slater used the term presence) Looks to game simulation where 'less is more ' approach is accepted  'Wright, the creator of SIMCIty understands the value of leaving things out' .  Bartle (2003) 'if you introduce reality into a virtual world, it's no longer a virtual world: it's just an adjunct to the real world.  It ceases to be a place, and reverts to being a medium.
  

immersion and engagement different , McMahan (2003) in the context of computer games.  In gaming McMahan sees immersion as fantasy part whilst engagement is linked to the challenges of the game.  Carr (2006) ' engagement and immersion are not linked to particular aspects of a game or a text.  Instead they are imagined as attentive states that sit along a continuum and that suggest a particular stance towards the game at a particular moment' ' Immersion can be countered when participant required to give attention to engagement' game 'allows the player to constantly move between the two ( Carr 2006, p.55)

There are things in SL that can act as triggers  and ' a task that is initially engaging might become a more immersive pleasure once the user attains competence'

Frasca's work on computer video describe how some can be passive pleasures.  In this case immersion would not be transformative.  'It is the interruptions that facilitate critique'

authors suggest ' players simultaneously operate from two perspectives - in -world and out- world'

Pedagogy

The authors describe how the different states of consciousness , immersion and engagement , could be targeted as part of the approach to teaching and learning in gaming & virtual world environments.

Bartle, R. (2003) Not Yet, You Fools! At Game Girl Advance (28.7.2003) http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/07/28/not_yet_you_fools.html, accessed November 2008

Carr, D. (2006) ‘Play and Pleasure’ in Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play, Carr, D, Buckingham, D, Burn, A and Schott, G (eds) Cambridge: Polity pp 45-58

McMahan, A. (2003) ‘Immersion, Engagement and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Video Games’, in Wolf, M and Perron, B (eds) The Video Game Theory Reader. New York: Routledge pp 67-86