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Virtual Real."],"abstract":"<jats:p>As communication scholars become increasingly interested in studying virtual reality (VR) as a communication channel it will be important to establish useful measures related to perceptual variables in virtual environments. One such variable is physical fidelity: the degree to which virtual environments replicate or resemble places in the physical world. Often in computer science and other fields interested in VR, this variable is measured as reaction time within the system. However, for social scientific VR scholars, it can be important to understand how much the user perceives the environment to have physical fidelity. In the existing literature when physical fidelity is measured as a perceptual variable, it is often conflated with measures of immersion or spatial presence. This paper presents a confirmatory factor analysis approach to establishing a well-fitting scale of perceptual physical fidelity over three separate samples as well as delineating the conceptual and operational differences between physical fidelity, immersion, and spatial presence.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/frvir.2026.1741892","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,11]],"date-time":"2026-03-11T06:52:51Z","timestamp":1773211971000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Measuring perceived physical fidelity in virtual reality and virtual environments"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"7","author":[{"given":"Bree","family":"McEwan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto","place":["Toronto, ON, Canada"]}]},{"given":"Clarice","family":"Wu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto","place":["Toronto, ON, Canada"]}]},{"given":"Harris","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Information, University of Toronto","place":["Toronto, ON, Canada"]}]},{"given":"Michael","family":"Nixon","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto","place":["Toronto, ON, Canada"]}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,11]]},"reference":[{"key":"B54","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"734","DOI":"10.1089\/cpb.2004.7.734","article-title":"Immersion and emotion: their impact on the sense of presence","volume":"7","author":"Ba\u00f1os","year":"2004","journal-title":"Cyberpsychol Behav."},{"key":"B1","article-title":"Virtual environments standards and terminology","volume-title":"Handbook of virtual environments: design, implementation, and application","author":"Blade","year":"2002"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"36","DOI":"10.1109\/MC.2007.257","article-title":"Virtual reality: how much immersion is enough?","volume":"40","author":"Bowman","year":"2007","journal-title":"Computer"},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"E67","DOI":"10.1891\/1061-3749.25.2.E66","article-title":"Back to reality: the use of the presence questionnaire for measurement of fidelity in simulation","volume":"25","author":"Brackney","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. 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