Lighting a Path While Immersed in Presence: A Wayward Introduction

The sense of presence in simulated environments, be it fragile and fleeting or sometimes deep and traumatizing, is the construct used to describe, measure, and sometimes evaluate and design and optimize systems that provide that ability. We spend more and more time in simulated realities provided by the systems that occupy our walls as screens or projections, fill our hands with messages from other places, or increasingly attach to our bodies and senses augmenting our physical reality with virtual objects, places, and beings.