Presence in VR: Developing measure and stimulus

This is a research project that involves development and further validation of the VR application that can be used by researchers as a behavioral measure of the sense of presence in VR, more specifically, of the factors unrelated to the virtual content. Another side of the project relates to one of the possible factors, which is priming via preamble, or a virtual replica of the immediate physical environment, used to stimulate presence. It is planned to manipulate the realisticness of the preamble, where less realistic preamble can lower expectations towards the next virtual environment increasing chances for the sense of presence to appear. The project is on the ‘pre-research stage’ due to the difficulties that the pandemic has brought in many aspects of our life. Therefore, one of the questions that is necessary to discuss is how to conduct a subject-based research at the times of ‘social’ distancing.