Perceived Realism of Virtual Environments Depends on Authenticity

While the perception of a virtual environment (VE) is usually described in terms of its level of immersion and users’ sense of presence, the construct of authenticity might be more useful. The authenticity of a VE depends on whether the affordances and simulations chosen in its implementation support (1) users’ expectations based on their Bayesian priors for regularities in the real world and (2) the users’ intentions in the VE.