Keywords

1 Introduction

A place can be defined as a spatial environment that exists in the physical world. Tourists visit places and tourism researchers seek to capture and understand how tourists experience place, typically referred to as ‘destination.’ Most video games feature fantasy places, but there are many examples of well-known cities in games. Salmond and Salmond [1] observe that some videogames represent environments that encourage touristic behavior. This has not gone unnoticed by researchers studying geography, travel and tourism. The geographer Leigh Schwartz (2006) [2: 315] quotes a player of the video game Grand Theft Auto: “You feel as if you’re in a real town/city with other people” (p. 315). According to Widyarto and Latiff [3] a virtual application works well in a travel context as a tool for getting to know a place. Is it possible that gamers visit and explore a game space in a similar manner to tourists?

The tourism industry uses different media-channels in order to attract visitors to a destination. A tourist may not be satisfied with a virtual substitute for a physical visit, but the virtual experience might increase their desire to visit the actual place [4]. Lombard and Weinstein [5], in their study of technology-mediated presence experiences, quote a participant as writing: “I completely felt that I was a part of the world and the characters and settings were all real and places I have been (our emphasis)”, (p. 6). This raises the question of whether an experience in a video game is only about the here and now of playing the game, or is it also about going to the place as a tourist, in other words a virtual tourism experience?

To illuminate this question in the present study, we formulated the following research questions; what is the relationship (if any) between the telepresence experience and affordances in the virtual environment, and what is the relationship (if any) between the sense of place experience and affordances?

From a theoretical point of view, how should we understand and empirically investigate the activities of a tourist through there actions at a destination in a virtual environment? In this paper, we draw attention to Gibson’s affordance concept and the notion of action possibilities. According to Jonietz and Timpf [6], the affordance concept emphasizes the central role of action potentials for spatial perception and ties together the afforded action, geospatial objects and the subjective element of human perception. Jonietz and Timpf’s context is geography. To these authors, places are predominantly perceived as action spaces. As a research field, tourism is closely related to geography [7].

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next section is a review of previous research with relevance for understanding the experience of place in VEs and why we have chosen affordance as the dependent variable in the research models. Then, based on the review of the literature, research models and hypotheses are derived, followed in subsequent sections by an outline of the research method and measurements, data analysis and results. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the results and their implications for theory and practice.

2 Perspectives on Virtual Places, Virtual Tourism and Game Environments

The concept of place is one of the core constructs in human geography [8]. Tourists visit places, and it is therefore reasonable that destinations and attractions represent a core subject in tourism research terminology [9]. Virtual reality (VR), film, graphics and many types of multimedia can be used to replicate a place and present it with a high degree of realism. Guttentag [10] argues that new technologies such as VR will create many opportunities for the tourism sector. Some videogames have created environments that encourage touristic behavior [1]. Virtual tourism and VR for tourism purposes can be traced back to the early 1990s [4, 11,12,13,14] when virtual tourism research was primarily conducted by information technology researchers. They anticipated virtual tourism becoming a mainstream knowledge domain for adoption by the tourism industry. Some also investigated the relationship between virtual tourism and actual travel. Fencott [15, 16] argued that the longer visitors linger overall in virtual tourism environment, the more likely they are to find the virtual experience memorable and perhaps retain the desire to actually visit the place the VE is modeling.

Slater and Sanchez-Vives [17] discuss virtual travel with reference to Cheong’s (1995) [13] visions for virtual tourism in the mid-1990s, because “virtual reality offers numerous distinct advantages over the actual visitation of a tourist site.” According to Slater and Sanchez-Vives this vision has not been fulfilled, and they speculate that: “Perhaps, VR is not meant to be a substitute for real travel but just another form of travel (our emphasis), no less valid in its own terms than all that physically boarding the real airplane entails”. Acosta et al. [18], focused on mobile devices and technologies such as HTC VIVE, Oculus Rift and GearVR Headset as tools for the exchange of information and presenting atmospheric aspects of the experience. Tussyadiah et al. [19] found that virtual environment can increase enjoyment and produce a stronger liking and preference for a destination. They conclude that VR can an effective marketing tool and that their study “provides empirical evidence from the field of tourism to support previous research suggesting the positive consequences of presence in VR on attitude and behavior” (p. 152). According to Beck et al. [20] there are studies that suggest that VR, regardless of whether it is non-, semi- or fully immersive, is capable of positively influencing the individual motivation to actually visit a place.

Schwartz [2] argues that realism and attention to details allow gamers to experience game spaces as real. He cites a player of the video game entitled Grand Theft Auto as an example in which “you feel as if you’re in a real town/city with other people” [2]. Therefore, it can be inferred that some gamers visit and explore the game space in a similar manner to tourists. Schwartz concludes that video game environments afford the blending of fantastic and realistic aspects into a believable, attractive place for players to visit, just as tourists may conjure up images of faraway places when reading stories about foreign countries.

We can also find examples of researchers who have approached game-worlds as ethnographer/tourists [21]. Martin [22] reviewed a number of video-games, 258 in total. Many of them included actual places in the USA. Quite often, racing games have reproductions of real tracks or cities. Liberty City in the game GTA IV is based on New York city. Martin [22] makes a detailed list of the names of places and streets in the game, and the equivalent names in the actual city. Although it is not a task in the game, a player of the game can explore the city as a tourist. Schweizer [23] give more detailed examples of tourist activities in games. In N.Y.C: The Big Apple, the game-player is a tourist seeking Manhattan landmarks and visiting places. In a number of games, sightseeing is an option, an alternative to explore the (game) place. In Driver San Francisco, monuments and landmarks “become essential for conveying the San Francisco-ness” of the city. Examples of landmarks are the Transamerica Pyramid, the Ferry Building, Union Square, Fisherman’s Wharf and Lombard Street [23].

The authors of the publications from the Benogo project linked tourism and telepresence, and also human geography, to experiences in VEs [24,25,26,27]. The paper by Hyun and O’Keefe [28] builds on telepresence. There is a connection between the two; the term virtual tourism is related to telepresence because both concern the feeling of being there. In tourism research some refer to the telepresence concept, but there remains a dearth of empirical work, including telepresence measurements, in the context of virtual tourism.

3 Telepresence

In 1420 the Venetian engineer Giovanni Fontana designed the castellum umbrarum, the castle of shadows. Codognet [29] describe this apparatus as a pre-cave installation and probably one of the first examples of VR. Today the term telepresence is used to describe technology that allows a person to feel as if they were present at a place other than their physical location. According to Marvin Minsky [30], Patrick Gunkel at Hudson Institute coined the term “telepresence” in 1979. The term refers to tele-operation technology that provides the user with a “remote presence” in a different location via feedback systems that allow her to “see and feel what is happening.” But the concept of telepresence is older. It emerged in an academic context beginning over a half a century ago in film theory [31] and sociology [32]. The first experimental three-dimensional TV set was built in the 1920s [33]. In the 1960s, Sutherland [34] wrote about the ultimate display. He describes the display as a technical system with interactive graphics, force-feedback devices, audio, smell and taste, which serves as one of the early empirical VR examples.

Telepresence refers to experiences that cover a wide range of phenomena involving interaction within a real, yet physically remote, environment. It is a rich concept with several components. It represents remote presence, i.e., a mediated (or medium-induced) experience [35, 36], and is usually designed to alter a given psychological state or subjective perception [37]. The highly cited definition by Lombard and Ditton [38] is of telepresence as the illusion of non-mediation. The media available to render this experience are not necessarily high-tech.

Some researchers describe the sense of presence as a function of our experience of a given medium [38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45]. According to this view, the level of presence is reduced by the experience of mediation. The question of why humans can feel presence when they use media or simulation technology is seldom addressed by researchers that advocate this view of media presence.

Other researchers consider presence as ‘inner presence’, a psychological phenomenon not necessarily linked to the experience of a medium [36, 46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53]. Presence is, according to this view “the intuitive perception of successfully transforming intentions into action” [54]. According to Waterworth et al. [55], this view reflects an understanding of the evolutionary function of presence, that of distinguishing internal events (such as daydreaming) from current external events in the physical world (which must often have priority for survival of the individual). Because of this, these authors suggest that immersion in a book or in a daydream should not be seen as an example of presence. Presence requires mental engagement with an external world (whether the physical world or a VR). Baños et al. [56] tested this interpretation by comparing reported sense of presence in imagined space versus VR. They found that participants in the former experienced a decrease in their sense of presence, compared to a control condition, whereas the opposite occurred for participants in VR.

By both these views, the sense of presence in a place produced by media will be less if the experience of mediation is greater. By the second view, the sense of place produced via technology is essentially the same kind of experience as that produced by visiting an actual physical location.

Turner, Turner and Carroll [27] comment that the users of a virtual environment need a meaningful narrative in order to create an engaging experience and a sense of place. The contextual factor plays a role that goes hand in hand with a compelling narrative. For testing and research purposes Turner and Turner [26] used the botanical garden and the technical university in Prague as two virtual environments. In the tests the participants were given specific roles and tasks. One of the tasks was to conduct surveillance and watch people use a staircase to come and go from a particular place in a virtual environment. These two quotes show that the participants experienced the environment differently: “It was very empty I think,… very... very impersonal feeling...” “I think it took a lot of my attention just looking down, if anybody were coming in or going and then of course I was listening to all these… these voices around …” [26: 213]. The authors write “Did the technology recreate the sense of being seated at a desk on a staircase in Prague?” the answer is again—not proven.” (p. 214). Turner et al. (2006) [27] assert that “Relph’s discussion of insideness and outsideness offers a compelling insight for contextualizing the VR experience.” [27: 291]. In a similar way, Shamai [57] argues that Relph’s distinction between seven different degrees of outsideness and insideness in ways of sensing a place is quite suitable because it takes into account the strength of the relationship, the level of intensity of the experience in relation to the place. He writes that “each different way of sensing the place can be seen as a different level on an ordinal scale; that is, starting with the lowest level of sense of place and ‘climbing’ up six more steps to reach the most intense and deepest way of sensing a place” [57: 349]. Based on this it can be hypothesized that for a place experience the insideness types have a better fit with residents than for visitors, and that the outsideness types have a better fit with visitors than residents.

Biocca [58, 59] writes that the problem of presence, especially perception mediated by technology, or more generally telepresence, is most fruitfully conceptualized as a subset of the mind-body problem. For Biocca presence is motivated by the desire to transcend the body “to move beyond the limits of the body and the sensory channels” [58: 13] and he calls attention to what he calls the cyborg’s dilemma: the extension of the human senses through technology [60]. Merleau-Ponty writes, in Phenomenology of Perception [61] that only through our lived bodies do we have access to what he describes as the primary world. He argues that consciousness is necessarily intentional. To him the most immediate and essential aspects of the lived dimension of space are sensory experience and bodily movement. His thinking has not gone unnoticed in telepresence, a field that often emphasises the visual sense. For instance, Turner et al. [27] write, after reviewing Merleau-Ponty’s theory, “instead we argue that the role of the body in virtual environments can be attenuated by recognizing that a tourist’s corporeality may be less important than their visual sense” [27: 11].

4 Affordance, Perception and Action

Gibson [62], a perceptual psychologist, introduced the term affordance in The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Since then the affordance concept has been used in a number of disciplines other than psychology. One example is human computer interaction [63, 64]. Affordance refers to something seen to be response-dependent, namely, instantiated by virtue of a behavioral response (e.g., a catching, a throwing) a subject would have relative to the property bearer. Affordances are independent of whether or not they are perceivable or eventually directly or indirectly perceived [65].

One type of affordance is a perceptual or perceptible affordance [66]. User interfaces can offer perceptual affordances because they can offer information about objects that can be acted upon. A perceptual affordance is a perceptual cue to the function of an object that causes an action. For instance, a visual presentation contains visual information about the behavioral possibilities afforded to the user. It is this action and behavioral aspect that the affordance concept captures.

There are a number of actions that provide perceptual affordances in sightseeing when it takes place in a virtual environment. A perceptual affordance queries what activity a particular sightseer would like to engage in at a particular moment in time. Consider an attraction on the screen, for instance, a tourist who gazes at a historic monument and at that moment thinks “I will walk to the front-door and enter the building through that door.” A video game context can simultaneously enable the perception of action when watching images on a screen, while sitting passively in a chair. An example might be a website for a destination developed for marketing purposes. What is the effect of this website? An interview may reveal that the website-user considers the portrayed destination to be beautiful. Whilst another person who looks at the same website may decide it is time to book accommodation; find out how to get there, and search for events and what to do upon arrival. It is this second example that corresponds to the notion of perceptual affordance. Flach and Holden [67] were among the pioneering scholars to investigate affordance and presence and emphasized the necessity to understand the effect of interaction with objects in virtual environments.

In this paper we argue that affordance, a concept emphasizing behavioral possibilities, seems relevant as a response variable in an empirical study on virtual tourism. We developed and tested two research models in order to investigate sightseeing experiences in a VE. The first is a model with a telepresence measurement instrument, the second model with a sense of place measurement instruments from human geography. Affordance, a perceptual possibility for action, is our choice for the response variable in both models.

5 Research Models and Hypotheses

We derived three constructs from our literature review presented above, each concerning experience of place, with affordance as the response variable. The telepresence perspective emphasizes mediated experience(s), for instance how an environment in a game is perceived. The constructs from human geography underscore the relationship between individuals and a place, and also what the place means to a person. These were not developed with new technology in mind, but still the concepts might also be relevant to use in a mediated environment. Affordance incorporates the active element, not only passive viewing but the behavioral as well.

In both research models we posited a positive association between the independent variables and the response variable affordance. Prior research on telepresence indicates a positive relationship; a high level of presence is more strongly associated with affordance than a weaker level of presence. Figure 1 presents the two research models investigated in this study. We hypothesised that we would also find a positive relationship with affordance in these models.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Research model 1 (left) and Research model 2 (right)

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6 Method

The research design was a within-subject design, meaning that all participants had the same sightseeing experience which was measured with the same scales. For pre- and post-questionnaires, paper and pencil testing was used. Before an individual session was completed, the interviewer checked that the participant’s two questionnaires had been fully completed.

6.1 Participants

A total of 60 students took part in the study. They were recruited from a class of international summer students (19), from classes at two different business schools (25) and through an electronic billboard for university students (16). Of the 60 participants, 60% were female and 40% were male, 48% were between 19 and 24 years old, 27% between 25 and 29, and 25% were 30 years or older. Of the participants, 75% answered that they used video or computer games approximately once a month or more seldom and 25% weekly or daily. The students were offered 5 euros for participating in the study.

6.2 Materials

This study applied video gaming, specifically a Playstation game, with the purpose of creating an immersive and lifelike 3D environment for sightseeing. The game Midnight club LA, containing sections of Los Angeles, was chosen for this purpose. Many tourists go sightseeing and, although the game does not contain a sightseeing tour as such, it enables users to sightsee. In order to achieve ecological validity by creating a sightseeing experience in the VE corresponding to physical sightseeing in the city, the music that comes as a game component was turned off and replaced by an audio clip taken from the Tourcaster production Hollywood Audio Tour. As a consequence, the audio came from a laptop computer placed in front of the participant and not the game itself. The guide on the audio is a storyteller. For the participants, the visuals, the interaction through the steering wheel and the story told by the guide, became one experience. Tourists share their experiences with others and good stories are persuasive [68, 69]. To cite Weick [70], they think narratively [71]. A sightseeing experience is thus more than just a visual experience.

6.3 Procedure

The same procedure was used for all participants. First the interviewer explained that the participant was going to visit a city on the screen after s/he had filled in a pre-study questionnaire. The session with introduction, pre-study questionnaire, sightseeing, and post-study questionnaire lasted 45 min of which the sightseeing lasted 15–20 min. The name of the city was not explicitly mentioned before the participant filled in the pre-study questionnaire, but the participant could see a view from Los Angeles (LA) on the screen. The invitation had pictures from Los Angeles and a short text about sightseeing in LA. After the pre-study questionnaire was completed, the interviewer gave a short demo and explained to the participants how to use a Playstation with a steering wheel. The interviewer said “you are now going to do sightseeing in LA on the screen in front of you.” In order to synchronize the visuals and the sound, the interviewer gave instructions such as “now please stop and listen to the guide”, “please continue on Hollywood Blvd to the traffic light in front of the Highland center”, “please stop in front of the shop opposite the Graham Chinese Theater and listen to the guide”, so on. The participants used a steering wheel with the option “bumper view” which means that the participant did not see the car, but only the street, that is the environment in front of the car. Although the sound was not fully integrated in the game, the visual and the narrative fitted well together.

Only after the task and surveys were completed were the participants shown the cover of the game. The post-study questionnaire revealed that none of the participants had actually played the game Midnight club LA before participating in this study.

6.4 Measurement Instruments and Structural Modeling

We applied different measurement instruments on the dependent side for each of the two research models, and the affordance measurement for the response measurement, as shown in Fig. 1. The Temple Presence Inventory (TPI) was used to measure telepresence [38]. The TPI uses a 7-points Likert scale and prior research has validated the scale [38, 72]. The measurement for Relph’s three types of sense of place, was made by Tjostheim and Go [73, 74]. Finally, affordance was measured with a three-item scale developed by the first author.

Partial least square (PLS) was used to verify the two measurement models and test the research hypotheses. PLS is a structural equation modeling technique, which can simultaneously estimate measurement components and structural components that are the relationships among these constructs [75, 76]. PLS is appropriate to use when assumptions of multivariate normality and interval scaled data cannot be made, and when the primary concern is with the prediction of dependent endogenous variables [77]. As a structural equation-modeling tool PLS can handle formative and reflective constructs, and compared to other SEM tools such as LISREL and AMOS, it does not require a large sample size [76, 78]. With PLS it is not a prerequisite that the research models are based on comprehensive theories [76, 79]. A research model should have a theoretical foundation, but might contain exploratory aspects. This is particularly relevant if the research purpose aims to expand a model or theory. In this study, scales from established theories were applied in a setting in which 3D technology was used to create a mediated experience. As a consequence, the study contained an exploratory aspect.

The minimum sample size required by PLS is seven to ten times the larger number of paths leading to an endogenous construct when, as in this study, all constructs are reflective [79]. Furthermore, the guidelines and quality criteria for PLS and measurement modeling were followed. The first step was to assess the convergent validity, reliability and discriminant validity of all latent constructs before testing the research model. Discriminant validity is suggested if all measurement items load more strongly on their respective construct than on other constructs. Convergent validity is suggested if factor loadings are 0.60 or higher [80] and each item loads significantly on its latent construct [81]. Some items were lower than 0.6, see for example place dependency, but without having a negative effect on the discriminant and convergent validity of the research models. For spatial presence, the item with a loading below 0.6 it is easy to explain and as expected, because the voice of the narrator was not integrated with the game, but came from a laptop computer. The perceived lack of control with para-social interaction can be related to the fact that the sightseer did not interact with the avatar. The avatar moved out of the way when the sightseer came close, but this just happened without direct interaction from the participant. For place dependency, it is the item “no other place can be compared to Los Angeles” that did not load on the construct.

Some researchers delete items with a low loading, but in this study these three items were not removed. When a construct has five to seven items to capture the completeness of the construct as in this case, the fact that one does not load satisfactorily on all items is not a substantial problem. Also, the square root of AVE of each construct should be higher than the correlations between that construct and any other constructs [75]. All constructs in the two research models satisfied these two criteria for discriminant validity with one exception. There was a correlation between spatial presence and parasocial interaction. For all latent variables, the composite reliability and Cronbach’s alpha exceeded the recommended thresholds for exploratory research of 0.7 and 0.6 respectively, and the average variance extracted (AVE) was above the recommended 0.5 threshold, indicating a satisfactory level of convergent validity. Therefore, the four measurement models are considered reliable and valid, and able to support further analysis of the research hypotheses.

7 Results

Partial least squares (PLS) analysis was used to interpret data from the study and to test the hypotheses.

7.1 Results of the Hypothesis Testing

The first hypothesis states that there is a positive association between telepresence and affordance. The telepresence instrument, the TPI, contains five sub-constructs. The paths between engagement, perceptual realism presence and parasocial interaction were significant; see Fig. 2. Affordances concern interaction and as expected there was a significant relationship with engagement and parasocial interaction. From a theoretical point of view the user could have a high or low experience of 3D space and this can be unrelated to affordance. The lack of a significant relationship between spatial presence and affordance is therefore not surprising. In sum, there was a significant path between the feeling of being there and affordance. Chin [82] describes R2 as above 0.67 as substantial, and above 0.33 as moderate. The analysis shows that the overall R2 was 0.59 for model 1. This is an indication that there was a medium to strong association between telepresence with affordance.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Correlation scores for research model 1 subconstructs

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The TPI has a theoretical foundation [38] and the result can be regarded as an expected result. The TPI sub-constructs capture nuances that will be missed if a scale based on a simple question such as “to what extent did you have a feeling of being there” is applied. In Table 1 we present detailed information of the four models with sub-constructs. We conclude that research model 1 is supported.

Table 1. PLS results of the two models
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For the second research model based on Relph’s theory of sense of place, the explained variance was on a moderate level [82]. In the model the direct path for incidental outsideness and affordance was not significant (see Fig. 3 and Table 1), but for vicarious outsideness and behavioral outsideness the paths were significant. We also conclude that the data supports research model 2.

Fig. 3.
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Correlation scores for research model 2 subconstructs

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8 Discussion

In the physical world, place experience is a multifaceted phenomenon. That is to say, a place such as a city represents many offerings and meanings. One single measurement cannot capture all aspects and nuances of such offerings and meanings. A scale made to capture the experiential character of place, by necessity, would have to emphasize certain aspects and nuances at the expense of others. As a consequence, specific experiential aspects and nuances of place that might be relevant for some individuals in a particular situation or context are likely to be excluded. A multi-theoretical and multi-methodological approach is thus justified in the present study, because it affords comparison by contrasting the results of the scales employed.

In the present study, telepresence is a key concept. The study was designed as a personal sightseeing experience, which takes place in a VE, rather than in physical place in real time. Telepresence researchers would refer to this place as there. However, the other theories employed in this study emphasize the place concept to a stronger degree. For example, human geography and leisure science are concerned with what meaning the concept of place and the bonds to the place might have for the resident or visitor. With affordance as the dependent (response) variable structural modeling showed that the telepresence concept performs well with a relatively high variance explained, followed by sense of place, in explaining the effect of the VE experience. Many scholars have taken to using the telepresence construct, because it rests on a sound theoretical foundation and as expected worked well for city sightseeing in a VE.

Edward Relph [83] writes that he has limited knowledge about technology and virtual reality. However, Benyon et al. [84]; Smyth et al. [25]; Turner et al. [27], and the empirical data from this study attest that Relph’s theory seems to be an appropriate foundation for capturing and exploring a virtual environment in a travel and tourism context. Semantically, vicarious sense of place and telepresence are related. Depending on the purpose of a study, Relph’s theory can be used either together with telepresence or separately. There is a significant risk that a single scale or a one-size-fits-all approach will omit relevant information by not taking into account important factors. One goal of behavioral studies is to understand and predict how people behave. It is essential to understand tourists’ needs, motives and attitudes and in this regard the behavioral aspect of this study, particularly its emphasis on behavioral outsideness, represents a good fit.

When someone is sightseeing in a VE of a city that actually exists, it is primarily a visual experience, but the place is perceived as real [85]; or, to paraphrase the telepresence terminology, that person may have the feeling of being there. Some authors use the term real as an antonym for the term virtual. However, as this can be misleading, Lee [37] suggests that it is more appropriate to use the term actual. Following Etzioni and Etzioni [86] we suggest that face-to face may be an even more fitting term than actual or real. As Chalmers [87: 309] argues “…virtual reality is a sort of genuine reality, virtual objects are real objects, and what goes on in virtual reality is truly real.”

In all, the answer to the question of which method and theories to use and under what circumstances is not simple. Statistical analysis is no panacea and cannot replace salient theories and critical ideas that have stood the test of time. No doubt today’s technologies will be further improved and refined, especially their capacity to replicate places and aid tourists to imagine what activities they might be able to experience while visiting a particular place. Technologies are expected to play a role of significance in processes of replicating places and supporting tourists by boosting their powers of imagination. In this regard, visual and immersive technologies have the potential to bring about a new arena for interaction and competition, particularly in tourism marketing [88].

9 Concluding Remarks

Chris Ryan [89: 46] writes “The tourist experience is shaped by many things, motive, past experience, knowledge of place, persons with whom that place is shared, and patterns of change at the place, the images induced about place and activities, individual personalities.” Today, technology plays a key role in all phases of traveling, from planning, the travel itself, and on to the post-visit phase. Our study emphasized the subjective experience; how our participants judged affordances, the sense of presence when sightseeing in a virtual environment. The feeling of being there is not necessarily something that happens all the time during sightseeing in a VE. Engagement, which also has to do with the narrative and not only the visual and interactive element, contributes significantly to the feeling. Gottlieb [90] argues that the vacationer’s experience is real, valid and fulfilling, no matter how superficial it may seem to a social scientist. Sightseeing via a screen might be described as superficial, but in the moment it can be perceived as a real.