The notion of immersion in virtual reality literature and related sources
Borbála Szabó, Attila Gilányi
Abstract
The paper gives an overview of how virtual reality (VR) literature and related sources describe the notion of immersion, its sub-types and similar terms. There are two main schools giving definitions for immersion in VR, and their definitions are quite different. One school, associated with B. Witmer and M. Singer, regards immersion as a psychological state of the user. The other school, based on the works of M. Slater, sees immersion as an objective characteristic of a VR system. Some authors call the first type of immersion “psychological immersion” and the second type “technological immersion”. The authors of the present paper bring up the possibility of using alternative terms: “immersedness” for the immersion concept of the first school, and, for that of the second school, “immersingness” (denoting the actively immersing quality of the system) and “immersing” when referring to the act of immersing the user. The term “immersedness” is unambiguous, contrary to the term “psychological immersion” which could also mean a system characteristic when the system is created with the ability to try to manipulate the user with psychological means.