Glossary
360-Degree Video
360-degree video keeps the viewer in a fixed point surrounded by approximately 360 degrees of video. This approach is considered less immersive than traditional VR, where the viewer can actually move within the world that has been built. Although often referred to as VR, 360-degree video in and of itself is not considered Virtual Reality.
Accelerometer and Gyroscope
Accelerometers are used to detect the orientation of the device they are placed in, such as a mobile phone, tablet, or HMD. The gyroscope adds another dimension to the information calculated by the accelerometer, tracking the rotation of the device.
Agency
Agency refers to the interactive capabilities available to a user in a VR/AR/MR experience. Most developers agree that the greater the agency enjoyed by the viewer/player, the higher the degree of immersion, thus the more real the experience will feel.
Ambisonic Audio
Ambisonic audio involves recording in the full sphere, including sound sources above and below the listener, providing a more immersive auditory experience, as opposed to more traditional recording techniques that only record on the horizontal plane.
Antagonist
The antagonist refers to the opponent of the protagonist. A well-constructed antagonist often wants the exact same thing as the protagonist (to win the game, to get the job, to rule the universe, etc.), but their reasons for wanting the same goal are vastly different. Antagonists should have compelling but flawed reasons for doing what they do.
Apollonian Approach
The Apollonian approach refers to the philosophical idea of reason-based thinking. Apollo was the god of rationality in Greek mythology. This philosophy is often juxtaposed with the Dionysian approach, which relies chiefly on emotion and instinct.
Artificial Reality
Artificial Reality is another term for Virtual Reality or interactive immersive environments. The term comes from a 1983 book by Myron W. Krueger, which focused on his ideas about his work in the field, dating back to the 1960s.
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality is related to a larger idea called Mediated Reality and is designed to enhance one’s current perception of what they see, through some sort of hardware such as a display or glasses, as opposed to creating an entirely new experience, as is the case with Virtual Reality. The surrounding world of the user is interactive in Augmented Reality and able to be manipulated digitally. Allowing a user to click on the costume an actor is wearing in a film and then purchase the same outfit would be an example of Augmented Reality.
Avatar
Avatars are digital representations of computer users in virtual space. The term originated as a reference to the many varying incarnations of Hindu deities.
Backstory
Backstory refers to the events in a character’s life that occurred before a story begins. They may inform the present psychology, philosophies, and fears that character experiences.
Binaural Audio
Binaural audio uses a recording method that uses at least two and sometimes multiple microphones to simulate a realistic 3D stereo sound experience for the user. The technique accounts for the fact that human ears are found on each side of the head and creates a more immersive experience for the user.
Binocular Omni Orientation System (BOOM)
Binocular omni orientation systems are VR displays that served as forerunners to head-mounted displays. Users hold the viewport to their eyes and aren’t required to support the weight associated with HMDs.
Branching Narrative
Branching narratives refer to the use of nonlinear story structure that allows users options that progress the story along. Options continue to be offered to users until either each option is given an ending or a series of options eventually leads to the same ending as a series of other options. Many users associate branching narratives with the “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel series.
Cave
CAVE is an acronym that stands for cave automatic virtual environment. It refers to a VR theater or environment where projectors are directed around a room-sized cube. Users then experience an immersive environment inside the cube.
Character Arc
Character arc refers to how the protagonist changes over the course of a story. In every good story, a character grows, develops, learns something, or realizes some truth by the end of the story. However, it’s important to remember that these elements are part of a character’s internal journey and not something the audience can experience directly like the external journey.
Cinematic VR
Cinematic VR is created from cameras that create either VR images or images that can be stitched (see the following) together to create VR in postproduction. The term can be confusing in that it does not refer to VR created through animation or in another graphical fashion, even if those images are used to tell a cinematic story.
Dionysian Approach
The Dionysian approach refers to the philosophical idea of instinctual or emotionally based thinking. Dionysus was the god of irrationality and chaos in Greek mythology. This philosophy is often juxtaposed with the Apollonian approach, which relies chiefly on reason and rationality.
Dramatic Conflict
The need to increase conflict is one of the most common problems a story can run into. While there are many ways to raise the stakes in a story, three of the most useful are to (1) compress the geographic space between the antagonist and protagonist, (2) condense the amount of time the protagonist has to achieve their goal, and (3) add an additional character who opposes the protagonist as they pursue their goal.
Empathy
Empathy refers to the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person.
Energy
Energy can refer to a variety of different definitions, depending on the context or use of the term. In immersive communities, energy often refers to the transmission of feelings, emotion, or some other force between the user, the creator, and the created experience.
External Goal
The external goal is what the protagonist spends most of their time trying to achieve. Regardless of whether the protagonist likes the goal, the goal should be imperative. It should be the thing that drives them. The ending of a film should always reveal whether the protagonist achieved their goal, and sometimes, it’s more effective when the protagonist does not get what they want in the story but instead gets what they need.
Eye Tracking
Similar to head tracking, except the users’ eyes control the alignment as opposed to their head.
Field of View (FOV)
Field of view refers to the depth of visual immersion the viewer experiences when looking around them. It is usually referred to by the number of degrees a viewer can see around them at any one moment in time. The viewing angle, or field of view, for the human eye is roughly 200 degrees.
First View
First view is often referred to as the front view or the initial view that the viewer experiences when a VR scene begins.
Fish Tank VR
Fish tank VR is a term coined by Colin Ware that refers to a small VR environment of high-quality visuals that is self-contained, more easily controlled, and can exist within the real world. An advantage of fish tank VR is the speed of the rate with which objects can be oriented in space.
Formats/Platforms
Formats and platforms refer to the particular software and coding used to access VR/AR/MR content. Leading formats presently include Samsung’s Gear VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, and Open VR. The term “platform agnostic” is also frequently used in the industry and refers to not believing in the strict use of a single format or a nonpreference among the available platforms.
Gesture
A movement, usually of the hand or head, that expresses an actionable desire in virtual space. Often, gestures are made with controllers and tracked with sensors in current VR technology.
Global Agency
Global agency refers to the viewer/player’s ability to affect the overall narrative experience through world building and affecting the experience and potential success of other viewer/players.
Habituation
Habituation refers to the reduction of psychological or behavioral responses to the same stimuli over time. This condition is of concern to VR creators since some evidence suggests that users inside experiences stop responding in anticipated ways once the experience is no longer new.
Haptics
While encompassing a variety of nuanced meanings in various technological fields, this term in the world of Virtual Reality refers to a sensory experience such as touching something that’s not there or actually occurring in physical reality. Haptics are usually experienced through some sort of controller.
Head-Mounted Display (HMD)
A key piece of hardware delivering VR experiences to users, HMDs are typically goggles or a helmet. Some HMDs have sensors for head tracking (see what follows), which allow images in the viewing experience to be manipulated to match the position of the head.
Head Tracking
This term refers to a technology that uses sensors to keep up with the movement of the viewer’s head and move the images being displayed so that they align with the position of the head. In certain VR experiences, this technology allows the viewer to see the world that’s been built above, below, and around the viewer as they turn their head.
Hypermediacy
Hypermedia is a term defined by theorists Bolter and Grusin as a style of visual representation whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium. It refers to a user’s desire for immediacy (see definition below) in virtual space.
Immediacy
Immediacy is a term defined by theorists Bolter and Grusin and refers to the erasure of the gap between signifier and signified such that a representation is perceived to be the thing itself. Immediacy involves the removal of the evidence of the “screen” between the user and the experience.
Immersion
Immersion refers to the deep mental involvement a user experiences while participating in a particular piece of media.
Inciting Incident
Story gurus have called the inciting incident by many names over the years, but regardless of what they call it, they all agree you need one. The inciting incident is the moment that starts your story. It’s the moment when the protagonist becomes aware of their external goal. Think of this as “the phone call that changed your life.” After the inciting incident, nothing should remain the same for the protagonist. The inciting incident forces the protagonist to make a decision about whether to go on the journey.
Interactivity
Interactivity refers to the concept of two things working together, having influence with, and responding in some way to one another.
Interface
Interface refers to the point at which two things interact and communicate with one another, usually a human and a computer. An interface in VR may refer to the portal that a user enters or navigates VR space.
Internal Goal
Internal Goal refers to the achievement or intention that a character has but may never tell others. Finding love or acceptance are common internal goals for characters. These differ from external goals, which are usually explicitly stated in a story and are photographable.
Interpupillary Distance (IPD)
Interpupillary distance refers to the distance between the center of the pupils of the two eyes. This measurement must be precise in order to create an immersive experience in an HMD.
Intradiegetic
Intradiegetic refers to a narrative where the narrator of a story exists, is fully present, and is participating inside the world of a particular text.
Irony
Irony in cinematic storytelling refers to the ending of a story and the relationship between the external goal and the internal need. There are four types of endings:
- Positive—the protagonist gets both what they want and what they need.
- Positive irony—the protagonist gets what they need but not what they want.
- Negative irony—the protagonist gets what they want but not what they need.
- Negative—the protagonist gets neither what they want nor what they need.
Judder
Judder refers to the strobing or smearing of image inside an HMD in a VR experience. It occurs because of latency issues in the experience and can cause simulator sickness.
Kinesthetic Dissonance
Kinesthetic dissonance occurs when what the body does in reality and the sensations involved in such locomotion are not echoed in virtual space through haptic feedback.
Latency
Latency refers to any delay in the movement of the environment as a user moves their head or eyes. Since this never happens in the real world, the viewer is usually removed from the immersive experience of the environment when latency occurs. This technical difficulty is different from judder, which is “a combination of smearing and strobing that’s especially pronounced on VR/AR HMDs” according to Oculus’s CTO, Michael Abrash.
Local Agency
Local agency refers to the viewer/player’s ability to affect the narrative experience through personal choices such as what weapon he or she might employ or what direction one might look.
Ludology
Ludology refers to the study of games and (video) gaming. Ludologists support that stories are only a subset of games and that games should not be analyzed primarily in terms of narrative.
Metadiegetic
Metadiegetic refers to a secondary narrative told by a character inside a story.
Metaverse
Metaverse refers to a shared virtual space or environment, where users can interact with one another. In some contexts, it refers to the sum of all virtual worlds.
Mixed Reality
Mixed Reality refers to the combining of VR and AR principles and elements. A VR landscape with the ability to augment or control elements within that landscape would be an example of Mixed Reality.
Multiverse
Multiverse refers to a hypothetical set of possible virtual universes.
Narrative
A collected account of connected events, either written, spoken, or experienced. “Narrative” is often interchangeable with the word “story.”
Narratology
Narratology refers to the study of stories and storytelling. Narratologies support that games and other similar media are a subset of stories, and thus subject to primarily narrative analysis.
Navigation
Navigation refers to locomotion or movement from one place in space to another.
Payoff
The payoff refers to the emotional relief an audience experiences when an element referenced earlier in a story is completed or referenced again in some way.
Photo-Realism
Photo-realism refers to the technical qualities or resolution of an image or graphic that equals that of a photo or, in some cases, real life.
Point of View (POV)
Point of view refers to the perspective from which the user experiences a narrative. Common POVs include first person, in which a user moves through an experience as they would through their own eyes outside of virtual space, as well as third person, in which a user moves through an experience as an observer and goes unnoticed by others in the space.
Position Trigger
Position trigger refers to a point in space or interaction where a user’s presence or action motivates a predetermined reaction.
Presence
Presence refers to the level of realism a user experiences in virtual space. The higher the degree of presence, the more the user feels as though they are truly in the environment and experience.
Protagonist
The protagonist refers to the character we feel the most empathy for in the story. They are usually the main character—sometimes called the hero or heroine. This is the character through which the entire story unfolds and develops. The protagonist usually has a very specific external goal they must pursue over the course of the story as well as an internal conflict that needs to be resolved. A protagonist must be a person capable of making a believable, proactive choice at the end of the story in order to reveal to the audience that they’ve completed their character arc.
Refresh Rate
Refresh rate represents how quickly individual images (or frames) are updated on an HMD or traditional display. Higher frame rates create a more immersive environment for the user and cut down on technical difficulties such as lag as well as unpleasant user experiences such as nausea. Frame rates less than 60 frames per second increase the chances of both of these issues.
Remediation
Remediation is a term defined by theorists Bolter and Grusin and refers to paying homage to, rivaling, and refashioning previous media forms. For example, film is a remediation of theater. Some consider VR a remediation of film and video games.
Resolution
The resolution of the story is the revelation of the answer to the problem the protagonist has been trying to solve—did they or did they not achieve their external goal? A good resolution also addresses the world in which the story took place—is the world now a better place after the protagonist has completed their journey?
Reversal
A reversal occurs when something unexpected occurs in a story. This tool can be especially effective if the audience is expecting a character to make one decision and they make the opposite choice. This idea can also refer to the changes of fortune that occur between the protagonist and antagonist as the story progresses.
Sandbox Experience
Sandbox experiences refer to virtual spaces or activities in which users may gather and engage in various games or interactions together.
Setup
In many ways, stories are greatly about setups and payoffs. A setup is narrative information that the audience will need later in the story. Sometimes, a setup will not feel greatly important to the audience until it is paid off.
Simulator Sickness
Simulator sickness refers to nausea caused by technical issues such as latency or balance and navigational orientation problems experienced by users in VR experiences.
Social VR
Social VR refers to immersive virtual experiences where users may interact with one another and share activities, ideas, environments, and media.
Spatial Navigation
Spatial navigation refers to how users move through space within a virtual experience.
Stitching
Stitching refers to the postproduction process of taking footage, usually but not exclusively from multiple cameras, and combining them to form a larger continuous immersive experience. For example, the footage from multiple GoPro cameras might be stitched together to create a 360-degree video.
Tele-Existence
Refers to the concept of the presence experienced by a user when they are given the agency to jump from space to space without necessarily experiencing the journey between those spaces.
Uncanny Valley
Uncanny valley refers to the phenomenon that occurs when a computer-generated figure or artificial intelligence shares nearly identical qualities and behaviors as a human being but causes a sense of discomfort or repulsion in the human interacting with it.
Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality refers to an entire field of computer technology in which environments, individuals, and experiences are replicated and presented for user interaction. The term is widely used and can encompass a great many ideas. However, all concepts seem to circle around the idea of an artificial yet realistic experience through technology.
VR Surfaces
Aside from HMDs, other surfaces are available for VR/AR/MR experiences. Current surfaces include VR caves, VR domes, and VR tables. The number and types of surfaces that one may experience immersive content in grows each year.