Effects of Virtual Reality System Fidelity on Presence using the Fidelity-based Presence Scale

Numerous studies have investigated the effects of system fidelity as a whole on one’s total sense of presence in virtual reality (VR). The Fidelity-based Presence Scale (FPS), a recently introduced presence questionnaire, provides a method for investigating the effects of different system fidelities (interaction, scenario, and display) on different aspects of one’s sense of presence. In this paper, we present one of the first studies to investigate those effects for a locomotion task by conducting a 2 × 2 × 2 within-subjects experiment that reveals insight on how the components of system fidelity affect sense of presence. Like recent research, our results indicate that interaction fidelity and display fidelity significantly affect one’s interaction presence and display presence, respectively. However, unlike prior work, we did not find that changes in scenario fidelity significantly affected one’s scenario presence. We discuss other results and the possible implications of this research.