Going Beyond the Ordinary — User Perceptions of the Impact of Multisensory Elements on Presence in Virtual Reality at the Royal Opera House

What is it about?

This study explores how adding extra sensory features to virtual reality (VR)—such as vibrating floors, wind, and realistic avatars—influences people’s sense of presence. Presence is the feeling that the virtual world you are experiencing is real. The study asked 726 people who experienced the “Current Rising” VR experience at the Royal Opera House to fill in a survey. We found that blowing wind and the ability to walk freely had the strongest impact on presence. Surprisingly, the highly detailed VR hands had the least impact. Whether participants were experienced VR users or not made little difference, suggesting that multisensory elements can offer fresh, impactful experiences to everyone. These findings are useful for VR designers aiming to create experiences with stronger presence. Future research needs to be done, however, to control for a range of possible biases such as whether people can accurately assess the individual impacts of each multisensory element on presence.

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