Immersive virtual reality (VR) based on head-mounted displays has been identified as one of the key interaction technologies of the future metaverse, which comprises diverse interconnected virtual worlds and users who traverse between those worlds and interact with each other. Interaction in immersive VR entails the use of avatars that represent users. Previous research has shown that avatar appearance (e.g., body type, body visibility, and realism) affects the senses of embodiment and presence, which are among the key indicators of successful immersive VR. However, research on how the similarity between an avatar’s face and the user’s face affects embodiment and presence is lacking. We conducted a mixed-method experiment with 23 young adults (10 males, 13 females, mean age: 25.22) involving a VR scene with rich embodiment, a virtual mirror, and interaction with a virtual character. The participants were assigned to two groups: Group 1 had avatars based on their own faces, and Group 2 had avatars based on a stranger’s face. The results indicated that Group 1 experienced higher embodiment with no significant differences in presence scores. Additionally, we identified moderate and significant correlations between presence and embodiment, including their subscales. We conclude that the realism and similarity in an avatar’s appearance is important for embodiment, and that both embodiment and presence are intertwined factors contributing to immersive VR user experience.

Exergames aim to make exercise more enjoyable, especially for children and young adults who are accustomed to digital technologies. Calory Battle augmented reality (AR) is a mobile exergame that utilizes context awareness and AR to enable interaction with virtual content. Designing mobile exergames and AR interaction has received little scholarly attention. This article has several contributions to the design discussion: (1) implementation of a mobile AR exergame, (2) discourse on the game design process, (3) evaluation with 29 South Korean elementary school children and university students who suggested a good reception of the game and generated ideas for improvements of usability and AR interaction, (4) analysis of the game with respect to established game motivators and the Immersion, Scientificalness, Competitiveness, Adaptability, and Learning (ISCAL) exergame design model, (5) design principles and lessons learned, and (6) discussion of the flow experience in exergames. These results can be used by designers to create motivating and interactive mobile AR games.

Presence refers to the emotional state of users where their motivation for thinking and acting arises based on the perception of the entities in a virtual world. The immersion level of users can vary when they interact with different media content, which may result in different levels of presence especially in a virtual reality (VR) environment. This study investigates how user characteristics, such as gender, immersion level, and emotional valence on VR, are related to the three elements of presence effects (attention, enjoyment, and memory). A VR story was created and used as an immersive stimulus in an experiment, which was presented through a head-mounted display (HMD) equipped with an eye tracker that collected the participants’ eye gaze data during the experiment. A total of 53 university students (26 females, 27 males), with an age range from 20 to 29 years old (mean 23.8), participated in the experiment. A set of pre- and post-questionnaires were used as a subjective measure to support the evidence of relationships among the presence effects and user characteristics. The results showed that user characteristics, such as gender, immersion level, and emotional valence, affected their level of presence, however, there is no evidence that attention is associated with enjoyment or memory.

The affordability of equipment and availability of development tools have made immersive virtual reality (VR) popular across research fields. Gesture-based user interface has emerged as an alternative method to handheld controllers to interact with the virtual world using hand gestures. Moreover, a common goal for many VR applications is to elicit a sense of presence in users. Previous research has identified many factors that facilitate the evocation of presence in users of immersive VR applications. We investigated the user experience of Four Seasons, an immersive virtual reality simulation where the user interacts with a natural environment and animals with their hands using a gesture-based user interface (UI). We conducted a mixed-method user experience evaluation with 21 Korean adults (14 males, 7 females) who played Four Seasons. The participants filled in a questionnaire and answered interview questions regarding presence and experience with the gesture-based UI. The questionnaire results indicated high ratings for presence and gesture-based UI, with some issues related to the realism of interaction and lack of sensory feedback. By analyzing the interview responses, we identified 23 potential presence factors and proposed a classification for organizing presence factors based on the internal–external and dynamic–static dimensions. Finally, we derived a set of design principles based on the potential presence factors and demonstrated their usefulness for the heuristic evaluation of existing gesture-based immersive VR experiences. The results of this study can be used for designing and evaluating presence-evoking gesture-based VR experiences.