Immersion is the process of full mental concentration, the development, change and transition from one state of mind to another. The reduction of the display distance from the object being displayed increases the emotional engagement with the current event. In the study of virtual reality technology, “immersion” stands for making the user feel as if he is in the episode displayed on the screen”, “the user feels as if he is a part of the virtual environment and not an observer. He feels surrounded by the virtual scene and can look to the right and left, move freely around the environment, and interact with the objects as if he were in the real world, which he has already experienced”. In the current field of research, physiological immersion refers to the use of virtual reality technology to provide the user with visual, auditory and haptic sensory perceptions in order to make the user feel present in the world constructed by the virtual reality technology, a sense of ‘presence’. The term ‘immersion’ in psychological immersion refers to the psychological satisfaction of the user during the interaction, i.e. “an experience that is suitably challenging and immerses a person so deeply that they forget the passage of time and are unaware of their own existence”.
In almost all VR scenarios, there is a virtual image of the user themselves, which initially exists as an environment in relation to the user’s real body. vr gamers perceive and recognise this through a series of activities that lead the user to a sense of self-identity. If what the player body perceives and what is inherent is unified and believable, then the user will naturally integrate into the VR. This sense of identity needs to be maintained in many ways to be achieved.
I believe that the first thing that needs to be taken into account when designing sound in VR is the proximity of the sound, or the sense of space. Hearing is one of the main ways in which people acquire information. Therefore, the study of sound is one of the more important issues to think about in terms of how to create a sense of immersion in the virtual reality process. Sound can be described using interventions on perception and through the organisation and construction of perceptions and cognition. A hierarchy of contrasting strengths and weaknesses of sound will provide the brain with a very complete spatial imagery. Therefore we should not only demand the presence of sound, but also higher requirements for sound, such as more realistic detailing; displaying sound that fits the current position of the observer and follows the line of sight; ambient sound that gets different levels of nuance, etc. Another thing that can enhance immersion is sound surround. Virtual surround sound technology uses two-channel stereo hardware to create a simulated three-dimensional sound field without increasing the number of channels or sound materials by circuitically processing the sound field signal to make the listener feel that the sound is coming from multiple directions. The sound field can be reconstructed with head rotation and movement.