Impact of different immersive techniques on the perceived sense of presence measured via subjective scales

Virtual reality has once again gained recognition and attention with the recent hardware-driven technological advances and there is also a diversity of applications from videos produced using 360° camera systems to animated immersive 3D animations and interactive experiences or games. While the variety of the VR hardware, VR applications and their appeal are staggering, the user experience of modern day VR is still associated with the concept of presence. Assuming that there should be a difference in terms of presence between different immersive techniques, such as watching a 360° video and an interactive 3D game, this study attempts to answer whether the presence questionnaires developed before the new VR era are still capable of measuring it or not. For this purpose, three questionnaires, ITC-SOPI, TPI and MEC-SPQ, were selected with an emphasis on a questionnaires’ ability to discriminate between different media conditions. Three different VR environments were chosen according to their content domain and production method: respectively, a 360° video, a computer generated 3D animation and an interactive 3D game. 22 participants were engaged with these three different virtual reality environments in a within-subjects experimental design, using an Oculus Rift head-mounted display system and touch controllers. Results indicated that users’ sense of presence measured in terms of ITC-SOPI subscales are not sensitive to the different immersive techniques. TPI subscales are also not sensitive to the differences in immersive techniques, with the exception of the Social Realism dimension. Results provided evidence that among the subscales of MEC-SPQ, only the four item version of “Possible Actions” dimension was sensitive to immersive techniques. However, it should be noted that the Possible Actions dimension provides different results for 4-item, 6-item and 8 item versions.