Presence has become a key concept in characterizing and evaluating Virtual Environments. Our contribution is to show that current measures of Presence, as a metric of users' experience of Virtual Environments, are highly problematic: results from the literature cannot be repeated and it lacks a theoretical basis. We synthesize results from three experiments we conducted and in conclusion point the way to alternative approaches to the problem of characterizing Collaborative Virtual Environments.
Edwin H. Blake, Juan Casanueva, David Nunez