ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the presentation of self in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environments. Non-immersive VR systems do not directly track body motion, and so must rely on indirect interfaces, such as keyboard and mouse, to capture user input. In immersive VR, audio feedback is spatialized based on the user's head position in relation to the virtual audio source. The combination of head tracking to drive the egocentric, stereoscopic, and wide field-of-view into the virtual environment (VE), gesture-based input, and spatialized audio presents an experience that differentiates immersive VR from non-immersive. Experiencing the self in a VE can happen either by having technology that recreates our actual bodies from the physical world or by artificially constructing them. As Slater clearly articulates, presence is constructed by Place Illusion (PI) and Plausibility Illusion (PSI). PI creates the sensation of being in a real place while PSI creates the belief that the situation people are experiencing is actually occurring.
