The Art of Presence
- Emma
- Aug 28, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 10
In week 2 of classes, Mark Billinghurst gave a lecture about presence and perception and the importance of it in a virtual environment.
Presence: We usually think of presence as just being present in something, however how can we be present in Virtual Reality? (VR) How can we exist in a virtual space, physically? Presence in a virtual space is defined by Bob G. Witmer and Michael J. Singer (1998) as “The subjective experience of being in one place or environment even when physically situated in another.” So to be present in a virtual environment, we need to fool what makes us experience things. That’s perception.
Perception: Human perception is how we observe, obtain and interpret information. “Perception deals with the human senses that generate signals from the environment through sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.” (O. Ward & Grinstein & Keim, 2010) Through the senses we interpret our surroundings and all of the senses need to be working together, otherwise you can start to feel sick as your brain can’t figure out what is going on. An example of this is when you read a book while in a car, your eyes are focussed on something static, but you can feel yourself moving, then you start feeling motion sickness.
In VR, where the goal is to be completely immersed in a new environment, the senses need to be simulated effectively to create the sense of presence. We need to do more than understand human perception, but also understand how the technology can be used to do this, “We need to be able to use technology to provide real world sensory inputs, and create the VR illusion” (Billinghurst, 2020).
This clip from The Matrix is a great example of how manipulated perception (through the senses which are just electrical signals as Morpheus says) can make us feel present in a 'dream world'.
Case Study - Birdly
Birdly is a VR experience created in 2013 which lets you live out the “Ultimate Dream of Flying” (Birdly VR, para. 1). Who hasn’t had a dream of flying, right? Essentially you are a bird flying through the sky, you are able to explore the environment and physically flap your wings to move, it is a full body experience. What makes Birdly unlike any other flying simulation is that the way it simulates senses is incredibly effective.
Visual - A headset is worn which introduces realistic, high resolution environments immersing your visual preceptors. There are different landscapes which are able to be explored and interacted with such as a Jurassic experience, New York City and Lost Paradise.
Audio - Audio is an obvious sense that helps to place you in an environment and recognise the environment. For instance car horns and footsteps, sounds of motion places you in a city environment or bird songs, rustling leaves and animal calls places you in a forest or wildlife environment. Birdly gives audio cues to help solidify your presence in the virtual world. There are many different environment options and audios that go along with them, but a constant is the sound of wind. Along with the feeling of headwind through an automated fan (which I talk about next), the sound of wind accompanies the feeling which works together to immerse you in the air.
Wind - A key thing that Birdly does is have a fan in front of your face which pushes wind onto your face and body so you feel the headwind rushing past you as you fly by. This is important as if we didn’t have a sensation of headwind, we would not believe we are in motion. We know from past experiences such as running, being in a car, a boat that when you are in motion, we feel headwind.
Haptic - Haptic senses relate to touch and how you perceive touch. The most important part of Birdly is the full body intuitive experience it allows you. The machine which lets you lie on your stomach and gives you wings to flap. “Birdly® operators command their full-body VR flight experience instinctively with arms and hands – movements correlated to the flapping of wings and manipulation of primary feathers for speed, altitude and navigation.” (Birdly VR, para. 2). It plays with your equilibrium sense of balance - you are not safely grounded to the floor you are in the air and any move you make in the real world is relayed in the virtual experience. The proprioception is your sense of body position and again you are lying on your stomach, wings stretched out in the exact position it would be if you were flying (skydiving is another example of this which imitates flying). Acceleration is another sensation that is simulated in Birdly. If you tilt forwards, you fly downwards and pick up speed, if you tilt back, you lose some momentum.
References
Adam Savage's Tested. (2014, September 2). Flying the Birdly Virtual Reality Simulator [Video]. Youtube.
Billinghurst, Mark. (2020). Designing Mixed Realities. Mixed Reality Technology. [PowerPoint Slides]. Auckland University.
2020. Birdly. Somniacs.
Lai, R. (2016). Birdly and HTC Vive let you fly like a bird over Manhattan [GIF]. Engadget.
O. Ward, M., & Grinstein, G., & Keim, D. (2010). Interactive Data Visualization: Foundation, Techniques, and Applications. Human Perception and Information Processing. AK Peters.
Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L. (Directors). (1999) The Matrix [Film]. Warner Bros. Retrieved from The G2C. (2016, March 27). Morpheus explains what is real [Video]. Youtube.
Witmer, B. G., & Singer, M. J. (1998). Measuring presence in virtual environments: A presence questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators And virtual environment.
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