A critical aspect of virtual reality is the extent to which the user forgets their real surroundings and becomes completely engaged within the virtual environment. Diverse factors affect this user perception, which are grouped into two main concepts: immersion and presence. Although the study of presence is extensive, researchers have not reached a consensus on a protocol with specific instruments and stages to evaluate it. This leads to a wide variety of results with different assessment methods, experimental setups, stimuli implemented, and applications. Therefore, this article aims to provide an analysis of the state-of-the-art methods for assessing presence in VR systems during the last few years. This study seeks to determine and improve the understanding of current techniques used for presence assessment, human data collected, data analysis methods, and the technologies and virtual environments implemented. In addition, four opportunities are discussed to provide researchers guidelines that can lead to enhanced presence assessments and personalized VR experiences.
Ocampo et al. (2026) studied this question.