Immersion Definition
- Oxford English Dictionary
1. Dipping or plunging into water or other liquid, and tranf. into other things.
2. transf. and fig. Absorption in some condition, action, interest, etc.
- Slater and Usoh describe the term “immersion” as a description of a technology, which can be achieved to varying degrees. They separate immersion from presence by noting that presence is a psychological emergent property of an immersive system. Immersion describes a kind of technology and presence describes an associated state of consciousness.
(Slater, M. and M. Usoh, Body Centered Interaction in Immersive Virtual Environments, in Artificial Life and Virtual Reality, N.M. Thalmann and D. Thalmann (Eds). 1994, John Wiley and Sons: p.125-148.)
- Coomans and Timmermanns define immersion as the feeling of being deeply engaged where participants enter a make-believe world as if it is real.
(Coomans, M.K.D. and H.J.P. Timmermanns. Towards a Taxonomy of Virtual Reality User Interfaces. in International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV97). 1997. London.)
- Larijani focuses on immersive graphics as encompassing multidimensional between the real and illusionary worlds disappears
(Larijani, L.C., The Virtual Reality Primer. McGraw-Hill Series on Visual Technology, ed. C. Machover. 1993, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. )
- Manetta and Blade look to the mental side of immersion as the observer’s emotional reaction to the virtual word as being part of it, and presence being a feeling of being immersed in an environment, able to interact with objects there.
(Manetta, C. and R.A. Blade, Glossary of Virtual Reality Terminology. International Journal of Virtual Reality, 1998, http://ijvr.uccs.edu/manetta.htm.)
- Wells centres a description around the person, with presence as a sense of “being there” or of a person or thing “being here.”
(Wells, M.J., Virtual reality: technology, experience, assumptions, in Human Factors Soc. Bull. 1992, p.1-3.)
- Kalawsky describes presence as the sense of “being in” an environment as the most important attribute of spatially immersive displays.
(Kalawsky, R.S. New Methodologies and Technologies For Evaluating User Performance In Advanced 3D Virtual Interfaces. in The 3D Interface For The Information Worker. 1998. London: The Institution of Electrical Engineers(IEE).)
Present
1. a. The fact or condition of being present; being there. 1. b. An instance of being present.(-Oxford English Dictionary)
