The Role of Aesthetics in Believability

This is a picture of my character, stuck in what looks like a large globe model. My experience with Second Life was marked by the various ways in which the way the virtual world was rendered affected my experience. Movement felt slow and labored, and the other players who seemingly fell out of the sky didn’t help me feel immersed. I did like some of the environment, especially this castle-like room, (which reminded me of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks) but the graphics and glitches like the one above were too clearly artificial for me to be drawn in.