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Immersion

TL;DR
Immersion is not a single thing the hardware does to you. It’s a the shift in attention that dissociates you from your immediate surrounding, a three-part phenomenon that arises when (1) the system surrounds and affords action, (2) narrative gives meaning and coherence, and (3) participants exert agency that matters (from immediate operations to strategic choices). Presence (the feeling of “being there”) is related but not the same construct. The shift in attention, immersion, can take place regardless or not of that feeling.

Why the term is slippery

Different traditions load “immersion” with different meanings. Technical accounts often treat it as a property of devices and affordances (e.g., FOV, tracking, spatial audio, haptics). Psychological work has at times equated immersion with the feeling of “being there,”1 now discussed more precisely as Presence2, 3. Literary and game studies emphasize how storyworlds and player agency shape whether experiences become engrossing4, 5. Even within technically rich virtual reality, plausibility (the credibility of circumstances and one’s ability to act) strongly conditions responses6.

Bottom line: immersion is multifaceted; reducing it to optics, latency, or any single factor misses what drives learning relevance and engagement3, 7.

A three-dimensional framework

Treat immersion as emerging from three interlocking conceptual dimensions3, 7:

  1. System (technological environment). The substrate that surrounds the learner and affords perception and action: rendering, interaction fidelity, tracking, input, etc. System qualities enable possibilities; they do not guarantee immersion on their own.3
  2. Narrative (meaning and coherence). The diegetic/task framing that makes activity matter: roles, goals, stakes, and internal logic, be it literary or instrumental (mission brief, clinical case). Narrative organizes attention and expectations.4 Notice that symbolic meanings, even cultural meanings such as colors and other non-verbal cues such as positioning of people, convey mearning, which is part of this dimension.13
  3. Agency (doing and deciding). What the learner can actually do when commited to be meaningful: moment-to-moment operations, tactical choices, higher-order strategy, and how the environment responds with consequences.5, 10, 11, 12

Terminology note. Earlier work labeled this third axis “challenge”; subsequent work prefers "agency" as a label, because the word expresses more clearly the wide range of operational interventions and tactical/strategic decision-making.10, 11, 12

Immersion vs Presence

  • Abstract tasks or observer roles can yield strong cognitive immersion without a strong place-illusion.3
  • A technically convincing place-illusion can still be non-immersive if narrative motivation or meaningful agency is weak.6

Designers and evaluators should therefore analyze immersion and presence separately and select measures appropriate to each.8

What counts as an “immersive environment”?

An immersive environment is the full surround in which immersion can occur: the virtual setting (rendered spaces, objects, agents), the physical setting (room, equipment, safety), and the contextual conditions (cultural, organizational, social, logistical, historical). Within this whole, system properties are enacted, narrative reaches the learner, and agency is afforded and constrained.9

Practical implications for standards

  • Design: Treat system, narrative, and agency as co-requirements: plan S, N, and A together.3, 7
  • Evaluation: Avoid single-metric shortcuts. Use distinct instruments for presence and for immersion-relevant factors (agency affordances, narrative coherence, system fidelity).8
  • Reporting: When documenting experiences, explicitly describe S–N–A components and how they interrelate (e.g., strategic options, motivational framing, indispensable system features).10, 11, 12
  • Plausibility matters: Favor credible circumstances and consequential action over photorealism alone.6

Attribution

This synthesis is adapted from: Morgado, Beck & O’Shea (2025), with additional references to works cited therein.

Synthesis drafted by Leonel Morgado on Nov 12, 2025, with editorial assistance of ChatGPT-5 Thinking.

References

  1. Murray, J. H. (2017). Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. MIT Press.
  2. Witmer, B. G., & Singer, M. J. (1998). Measuring presence in virtual environments: a presence questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 7, 225–240. https://doi.org/10.1162/105474698565686
  3. Nilsson, N. C., Nordahl, R., & Serafin, S. (2016). Immersion revisited: a review of existing definitions of immersion and their relation to different theories of presence. Human Technology, 12, 108–134. https://doi.org/10.17011/ht/urn.201611174652
  4. Ryan, M.-L. (2015). Narrative as Virtual Reality 2: Revisiting Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (2nd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press.
  5. Frasca, G. (2001). Rethinking agency and immersion: video games as a means of consciousness-raising. Digital Creativity, 12, 167–174. https://doi.org/10.1076/digc.12.3.167.3225
  6. Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364, 3549–3557. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0138
  7. Agrawal, S., Simon, A., & Bech, S. (2019). Defining immersion: literature review and implications for research on immersive audiovisual experiences. 147th AES Pro Audio International Convention. Audio Engineering Society.
  8. Tran, T. Q., Langlotz, T., & Regenbrecht, H. (2024). A survey on measuring presence in mixed reality. In F. Mueller (Ed.), CHI ’24: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Article 543, pp. 1–38.
  9. Beck, D., Morgado, L., & O’Shea, P. (2020). Finding the gaps about uses of immersive learning environments: A survey of surveys. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 26, 1043–1073.
  10. Beck, D., Morgado, L., Lee, M., et al. (2021). Towards an immersive learning knowledge tree—A conceptual framework for mapping knowledge and tools in the field. In: 2021 7th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN).
  11. Pedrosa, D., & Morgado, L. (2024a). Immersive virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality for self-regulated learning: a review. In D. Crawford, J. Foss, N. Lambert, et al. (Eds.), Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Education. Springer, Cham, pp. 64–81.
  12. Pedrosa, D., Morgado, L., & Beck, D. (2024b). Immersive learning environments for self-regulation of learning: a literature review. In M.-L. Bourguet, J. M. Krüger, D. Pedrosa, et al. (Eds.), Immersive Learning Research Network. Springer, Cham, pp. 497–511.
  13. Morgado, L., Beck, D., & O’Shea, P. (2025). Bridging the gaps: an updated mapping of the uses of immersive learning environments. Virtual Reality, 29, 134. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-025-01208-y
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