Physiological Reaction and Presence in Stressful Virtual Environments

A common measure of the quality or effectiveness of a virtual environment (VE) is the amount of presence (the sense of being there) it evokes in users. Experience the dramatic VE reported in the SIGGRAPH 2002 Paper, Physiological Measures of Presence in Virtual Environments, that demonstrates that heart rate is a reliable, valid, sensitive, and objective measure of presence in stressful virtual environments.

Innovation
Measurement of effectiveness ("presence") of virtual environments.

Vision
For any VE that elicits a physiological reaction (stressful, relaxing, or otherwise), it is possible to construct a physiological measure of presence. These physiological measures of presence can be used to understand which aspects of the VE are important for improving presence. With this knowledge, VE practitioners could design more effective VEs.

Contact
Michael Meehan
Stanford University
1170 Welch Road #733
Palo Alto, California 94304 USA
meehan@cs.unc.edu

Contributors
Angus Antley
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
Greg Combe
Mark Harris
Brent Insko
Jason Jerald
Ben Lok
Samir Naik
Sharif Razzaque
Thorsten Scheuermann
Mary Whitton
Paul Zimmons
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill