Sense of Presence in MaxWhere Virtual Reality

Presence is a psychological phenomenon, the sense of being in a virtual environment. Experiencing presence is not limited to the users of full immersive virtual realities, but it can be experienced also in desktop virtual realities. These VRs visualize the simulated 3D environment on two-dimensional displays. MaxWhere is a desktop virtual environment for education, learning and working. It can be described as a 3D browser because any web-page could be loaded on the predefined SmartBoards of the virtual space. Already many research has been done on the use of this software, but this is the first time when the sense of presence is considered. The study aimed to measure the sense of presence in MaxWhere virtual reality and investigate its relationship with individual navigational experience and prior knowledge of the VR. Navigational experience is how much the user feels natural and automatic the movements in the virtual space. The results showed that better navigational experience correlates with stronger sense of spatial presence. Furthermore, the more experienced users reported higher sense of presence and gave higher rating on experienced realism subscale.