Immersion in Virtual Worlds - But not Second Life!

Previous attempts to quantify immersion have been pursued within the context of game virtual worlds where there is a clear outline of a goal. This paper seeks to investigate the problem of immersion measurement in an online based virtual world (ReactionGrid) where there is no distinct in-world goal and environmental context is less immersive as in a game environment. The experiment investigates participants' feelings towards their immersion experience while being in a virtual world. Our findings suggest that immersion mostly depends on co-presence and communication of users.