Reality and How to Forget about It: Increasing the Sense of Presence in Simulated Traffic Environments.

The sense of presence is commonly defined as the recipient’s subjective sense of being there in a virtual environment. In the context of HCI research in traffic, virtual reality methods as well as simulators of all kinds, including driving simulators, bicycle simulators or pedestrian simulators, are part of the standard research repertoire today. In these simulated traffic environments, it is usually the aim to produce a realistic impression of the corresponding real-world situation, creating a high sense of presence as well as realistic driving behavior. Throughout the course of the presented workshop, we intend to collect measures and exchange views about methods which can be applied to increase the sense of presence in driving simulation, avoiding so called "breaks in presence". Different measures to increase presence shall be generated and evaluated by the workshop participants. We further seek to discuss different components of presence, and how these relate to various types of simulation, as well as simulation validity. Summarizing, the present workshop aims to establish current knowledge regarding the concept of presence, while identifying promising future measures to increase the sense of presence in simulated traffic environments.