Social virtual reality (social VR) is a shared, interactive three-dimensional environment where people in different places meet and communicate through embodied representations, usually avatars. VR headsets are a common way to access these spaces, but the defining idea is the combination of a shared virtual environment, interaction among multiple people and a sense of presence—not a particular device or platform.
What makes an experience social VR?
Social VR brings multiple users into the same three-dimensional environment so they can communicate and interact there. Users are commonly represented by avatars, which may reproduce their movements in real time. Communication can include visual and audio cues, and some systems may use representations based on live capture rather than computer-generated avatars.
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A 2022 research article describes social VR as 3D virtual spaces, primarily accessed through VR head-mounted displays, where geographically distant users interact through avatars. Jie Li and Pablo Cesar, in a 2023 research chapter, describe it as a type of VR system that lets multiple users join a collaborative virtual environment and communicate, usually through visual and audio cues. These accounts share the core features, while differing in how broadly they describe the way people are represented.
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How is social VR different from a virtual world or social presence?
These terms overlap, but they do not mean the same thing. A screen-based multiplayer environment can be social without offering the immersive access and embodied interaction commonly associated with social VR. Likewise, social presence describes an experience—feeling that another person is there with you—not the technology or platform that may help create that feeling.
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| Term | What it describes | Useful distinction |
|---|---|---|
| Social VR | A shared, interactive 3D environment for multiple people, commonly accessed with a VR headset and using embodied representations such as avatars. | Focuses on the environment and how people interact in it. |
| Virtual world or multiplayer application | A multi-user digital environment that may be accessed on an ordinary screen. | Being multi-user alone does not establish that an experience is social VR. |
| Social presence | The felt sense of being with another person. | It is an experience that social VR may support, not another name for social VR. |
Spatial presence—the feeling of being located in the virtual environment—and social presence are related but distinct. A system can provide an immersive space without guaranteeing that a participant feels present there or connected to the other people in it.
Is a VR headset required?
Head-mounted displays are a common access method in academic definitions of social VR, but the cited accounts do not establish that every service described as social VR requires one. The useful distinction is between an immersive, embodied experience and an ordinary screen-based interaction; access requirements depend on the particular system.
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What does the research say about social presence?
A 2018 systematic review in Frontiers in Robotics and AI examined 233 findings from 152 studies about factors that predict social presence and its implications. Those figures describe the review’s evidence base, not the number of social VR users or the size of a market. They also do not mean that using social VR automatically produces a strong sense of connection.
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What to look for when identifying social VR
- Shared space: Multiple participants occupy and interact within the same three-dimensional environment.
- Embodied representation: Participants appear as avatars or another representation, potentially including live-captured forms.
- Real-time interaction: People communicate and take part in shared activity, often using spatial visual and audio cues.
- Presence as an experience: Users may feel located in the environment and with other people, but those feelings are not guaranteed by the technology.
Ralph Schroeder’s Being There Together: Social Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (Oxford University Press, 2010) offers scholarly background on interaction in shared virtual environments. A VR headset is the only physical product category needed to mention here; a particular model is not required to define social VR.
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