The Gestalt of Virtual Environments

Introduction The majority of research in the field of virtual reality to date has focused on increasing the fidelity of the environments created and trying to determine the quality of the participant experience. Efforts have been made to quantify such aspects, especially in regards to visuals and sound, and to a lesser extent to the user experience. [1-6] Recent thinking has tended towards the assumption that ever-greater fidelity would ensure a better user experience. However, such emphasis on photo-realism and audio-realism does not take into account the collective results of our multimodal sensory inputs with their intertwined effects. Our design philosophy for the creation of virtual environments attempts to replicate the human experience, and asks the question: Is there an underlying fidelity of feels-real through which the quality of the participant experience could be improved?