ABSTRACT
A synthetic environment is the collective term used to describe virtual reality, teleoperation, and augmented reality (Durlach and Mavor 1995). The distinctions and definitions used by researchers tend to be blurred. The definitions tend to contain reference to the form in which the technology manifests itself and/or the psychological characteristics of the environments and its effects on the person(s) using the technology. Durlach and Mavor (1995) distinguished between three sets of synthetic systems: virtual, teleoperator, and augmented. They argue that the term “synthetic environment” is the superset, which contains the sets of virtual, teleoperator and augmented reality systems. This relationship is illustrated in Figure 1.
