Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2014 number 4

The article reviews the digital virtual reality (VR) concept in the context of experiential fidelity. The concept implies virtual reality immersion effect to be fully achieved only when user buys accepts the rules of the virtual world, without taking audiovisual authenticity as a complete necessity. Reviewing the basic trends of VR system development, it may be concluded that photorealism remains the main direction driving the VR industry. Meanwhile, the experiential fidelity concept implies audiovisual authenticity only as an auxiliary feature in the context of transition and understanding of information. This remains relevant regardless of an application field. Designing the VR systems is based on providing the information which user would more likely trust. It should be mentioned that the same principle is successfully used in the videogame design. Potential user’s experience plays a dominant role in the videogame design, which is perfect for the experiential fidelity systems. Videogames has a complex and unique style to which many specialists from different areas refer, and pixel-art is an inalienable part of this style. The article then reviews main features of experiential fidelity VR systems, highlighting the pixel art style as the basis for user interface. Pixel-art is very useful in this context due to its foundation, domination of conventional images. Perceiving information based on a conventional image, the user uniquely interpolates it to a total image, and despite subjectivity of interpolation, main features remain untouched. This type of perception engages creative process, making the information mare likely to be understood and remembered. VR researcher M. Whitton points out that «... a combination of audiovisual experiential fidelity along with a well designed user interface which would unveil the rules of the VR world as it goes is the most effective data transfer system» [1, p. 45]. A combination of pixel-art in the context of experiential fidelity VR systems provides unique features that have a great potential for educational applications.