Virtual Reality, Art, and Entertainment

Most existing research on virtual reality concerns issues close to the interface, primarily how to present an underlying simulated world in a convincing fashion. However, for virtual reality to achieve its promise as a rich and popular artistic form, as have the novel, cinema, and television, we believe it will be necessary to explore well beyond the interface, to those issues of content and style that have made traditional media so powerful. We present a case for the importance of this research, then outline several topics we believe are central to the inquiry: developing computational theories for cognitive-emotional agents, presentation style, and drama.