Comparing Differences in Presence during Social Interaction in Augmented Reality versus Virtual Reality Environments: An Exploratory Study

In augmented reality (AR) environments, users experience the physical environment and other users directly along with mediated virtual objects embedded in the environment. In immersive virtual reality (VR), users experience of a visual environment (and sometimes other senses) is completely mediated. The representation of user’s body in virtual environments granted us a new research territory in dualistic interaction between the mind and body: how do the virtual body and user’s mind interact one another, and eventually affect user’s behaviors to the environment? An experiment was conducted to explore potential effect of users and interactant’s body to sense of presence in VR and AR environments. Results from the study suggest that the absence of representations of the user’s body in VR environment may lessen sense of spatial presence comparing with AR environment