Further musings on the psychophysics of presence

This is an extension of the author´s earlier paper (1992) which considered alternative meanings and significance of “presence”, the experience of “being there”, commonly called “telepresence” in the case of remote control or teleoperation, and called “virtual presence” in the case of computer-generated simulation. In both cases presence can include feedback to the human senses of vision, hearing and haptics, both kinesthetic and cutaneous. Presence is discussed here in terms of alternative subjective meanings, operational measurements, and meaningful experimental comparisons. Three practical approaches to measurement of presence are discussed, including elicitation of “natural” neuromuscular or vocal responses, single or multidimensional subjective scaling, and ability to discriminate the real and immediate environment from that which is recorded transmitted or synthesized, under varying levels of constraint. The author also opines on the stimulus magnitude, space and time attributes of human interactions with a tele- or virtual environment