Virtual worlds provide a distinctive and well researched context for immersive experience.
A virtual computer-simulated world typically appears similar to the real world, with real world rules such as gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions, and communication. Communication has, until recently, been in the form of text, but now real-time voice communication using VOIP is available. This type of virtual world is now most common in massively multiplayer online games (Active Worlds, ViOS, There, Second Life--although not games, per se, but more like virtual environments that can include gaming--Entropia Universe, The Sims Online, Red Light Center, Kaneva), particularly massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as EverQuest, Ultima Online, Lineage, World of Warcraft, RuneScape, AdventureQuest, or Guild Wars.
Immersion in gaming provides some useful conceptual aids with which to view immersion in real world contexts.
World of Warcraft and the Power of Massively Multi User Virtual Environments (power point)
Leonie Rasmondt
Olive
Playing Doctor: A simulated operating room at Stanford University Medical Center lets medical workers practice on make-believe patients.
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