Abstract
Immersion is a state of altered consciousness-not the prim suspension of disbelief, but its joyous capsizing. Since approximately 2012, a new ecosystem of immersive virtual reality technologies and experiments has emerged. In this emerging ecosystem, journalism is still a minor component. Nevertheless, media outlets such as The New York Times, BBC or ABC News have been producing virtual reality news stories. This led to the advent of immersive journalism, not only as a media phenomenon, but also as an academic concept. Drawing on some notions and concepts like the definitions of immersive journalism, immersion and presence, as well as some examples of the relation between journalism practices and visual media, we analyse, reflect and provide a general overview about the main concepts, uses, opportunities and limits of immersive journalism. Thus, the main goal of this article is to provide a theoretical and conceptual gateway that serves as a starting point for immersive journalism future academic and industry endeavours.

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This article investigates the role of storytelling in video game localisation and its impact on players’ immersion and overall gaming experience. While these topics have been extensively studied and developed within the research community, there is still a lack of information combining them in a practical study specific to a particular genre or video game. Using grounded theory, we conducted a study using The Witcher III: Wild Hunt as a case study (role-playing game). We had 41 participants play the video game in two localised versions (English and Brazilian-Portuguese), complete questionnaires, and be interviewed about their gameplay experience after each version. The results provided design recommendations to enhance video game immersion (language and voice-acting) and highlight certain aspects that game designers should consider to further intensify players’ immersion during gameplay.

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We propose a solution for generating dynamic heightmap data to simulate deformations for soft objects, with a focus on the human skin. The solution utilizes mesostructure-level wrinkles and procedural textures to add static microstructure details. It offers flexibility beyond human skin during animations to mimic other material deformations, such as leather and rubber. Various methods suffer from self-intersections and increased storage requirements during synthesizing wrinkles. Although manual intervention using wrinkles and tension maps offers control, it lacks information on principal deformation directions. Physics-based simulations can generate detailed wrinkle maps, but may limit artistic control. Our research presents a procedural method to enhance the generation of dynamic deformation patterns, including wrinkles, with better control and without reliance on captured data. Incorporating static procedural patterns improves realism, and the proposed approach can be used in other application areas.