Is Immersion In Virtual Reality Good Or Bad?

Immersion In Virtual Reality

Immersion is a unique experience connected with the world of virtual reality, where a stimulus is technologically used to establish an enthralling total environment (Freina & Ott, 2015). It is an act of physically being present in a non-existent world. It happens when the visual reality user gets surrounded by other visual images, which stimulate a completely different environment. The user explores the three dimensions involving the visual world reality to make the immersed believe in the real world. Fundamentally, it entails a feeling in which the user feels tangled in the virtual world designed by competent people in that field. The degree of faithfulness produced by the virtual or artistic environment determines the intensity of belief or disbelief (McMahan et al., 2012). Despite the technological inadequacies and imminent rebuttals against it, immersion in VR is “good” because it promotes networking, enhances communication aspects, and invigorates technological entertainment in society.

Immersion in VR helps users with networking abilities and interaction skills. Visual reality helps users in interacting with many things in the virtual world with more gratification. Networking and the interrelations between many things in the world bring about a sense of simulation, commonly called telepresence. Telepresence was brought forward by Jonathan Steuer, who was a computer scientist and VR enthusiast. It mainly captures the user’s attention so that they can forget about their real world, their identity, and physical situations while immersing themselves in a virtual world to interact more with the newly created objects. Jonathan Steuer discusses two main components of immersion, such as depth and range of information, to enhance the interaction aspects and the likely gratification to be achieved. He says that depth of information occurs when a VR user interacts with simulations between the environment and the user.

The extent of this interaction depends on the quality of the data received, the user’s psychological preparedness, the degree of suspense that the VR creates, and the level of disbelief that the user achieves. To improve the level of the alleged networking and the ultimate “immersion”, the VR should include quality graphics, clear audio, and a classy video to engage all the five senses of a user. Steuer further talks of “breadth” to demonstrate how one can designate a virtual environment to stimulate all the human senses. In a counterargument or a rebuttal, it can be argued that the networking abilities and interaction skills that immersion in VR provides are deceitful and impractical. It is not easy to apply the imaginary skills in a real physical world. Overall, despite the rebuttal, immersion in VR augments users’ networking abilities with the virtual world, which eventually improves how one interacts with the physical environment.

Another advantage that immersion in VR brings about is communication, which is propagated through empathetic listening. One of the instances that is empathetic to the listener is when the user shares personal moments with others. Immersion VR enhances real communication because the users are able to put themselves in other people’s feelings. They try to feel what the user says about the situation. Also, the quality of sound can improve communication in all VR immersion instances. What is more, high-resolution audio surrounded by 3D sound attached to noise filters and noise cancellation brought about by modern technologies helps to improve communication effectiveness (Huang, Rauch, & Liaw, 2010). Through the clear and well-audible sounds present in VR technologies, listeners have a higher desire to listen. In this regard, Qualcomm technologies’ access to digital processors has improved immersion in VR situations, which can promote effective communication among users. In a rebuttal, it is arguable that immersion in a virtual world cannot provide any substantial communication abilities except imaginary and impractical innuendos (Sherman & Craig, 2003).

Immersion in VR also provides exclusive entertainment to its adopters. Although it is mostly incorporated in the virtual environment, play makes people feel connected to other things in their environment through technology. Immersive technology can fool all the five senses of the body through panoramic 3D visual displays, force feedback and haptic, replication of smell, taste replication, and sound acoustics (Seidel, 2009). Modern technology has improved entertainment through visual realism, where stereoscopic displays in smartphones show clear images so that all scenes appear in their correct depth. For instance, the use of powerful pixels of high quality has also improved various aspects of virtual play, such that it cannot be differentiated from the world of reality. Mostly, the play makes immersion in visual reality more effective by using improved technology. In a rebuttal, immersion in a VR cannot provide real-life entertainment, where one interacts with physical objects to achieve optimal gratification; hence, the argument on exclusive entertainment is impractical and devious.

In conclusion, despite the rebuttals, immersion in VR is “good” because it provides exclusive entertainment, nurtures communication abilities, and improves interaction skills. Modern technology has made immersion in VR constructive because it allows people to perceive things and reason in a better and more improved way than before. The VR completely moves users to a new world through technology, which renders immersion an important area of interest.

References

Freina, L., & Ott, M. (2015). A literature review on immersive virtual reality in Education: state of the art and perspectives. In The International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education. 1, 133-4.

Huang, H. M., Rauch, U., & Liaw, S. S. (2010). Investigating learners’ attitudes toward Virtual Reality learning environments: Based on a constructivist approach. Computers & Education, 55(3), 1171-1182.

McMahan, R. P., Bowman, D. A., Zielinski, D. J., & Brady, R. B. (2012). Evaluating display Fidelity and interaction fidelity in a virtual reality game. IEEE transactions on visualization computer graphics, 18(4), 626-633.

Seidel, R. (2009). Virtual reality, training’s future?: Perspectives on virtual reality and related emerging technologies. Boston, MA: Springer.

Sherman, W., & Craig, A. (2003). Working with virtual reality. San Francisco, CA: Elsevier.