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Digital Make-Believe pp 27–47Cite as

Make-Believing Virtual Realities

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Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

A current concern in human-computer interaction lies in understanding how we experience virtual reality (VR). This chapter proposes that the VR experience relies on make-believe. The necessary decoupling from the real world to the make-believe world is costly in terms of the cognitive resources required but VR offloads some of the computation cost into the virtual environment (VE) itself. This is particularly true of high fidelity, immersive virtual environments. However, our ability to make-believe allows us to ‘fill-in’ the gaps in quite simple VR environments, with surprisingly effective results: we argue that this is because we have a propensity to see the world, including fictional and artificial worlds, as schematic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Please note that this is not the operationalization of engagement captured in the engagement scale in the ITC-SOPI instrument.

  2. 2.

    And indeed there is also a large body of research, in AI-based storytelling.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Make-Believe Lab, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

    Susan Turner

  2. ZyXEL Communications Corp., Hsinchu, Taiwan

    Chih-Wei Huang

  3. Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

    Luke Burrows

  4. School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

    Phil Turner

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  1. Susan Turner
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  2. Chih-Wei Huang
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  4. Phil Turner
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Correspondence to Susan Turner .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Phil Turner

  2. Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

    J. Tuomas Harviainen

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Turner, S., Huang, CW., Burrows, L., Turner, P. (2016). Make-Believing Virtual Realities. In: Turner, P., Harviainen, J. (eds) Digital Make-Believe. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29553-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29553-4_3

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