The Theory of Teleaffordances – About the Way in Which Affordances (and Not Only) Exists in Virtual Environment 3D

Despite the passage of time, James J. Gibson's theory of affordances is still a subject of debate in academia. Since Don Norman’s publications, you can hear its echo also outside universities. Therefore, no one should be surprised by transfer of this theory to the virtual world, which has been happening in recent years. Unfortunately, there are also some complications associated with this transfer, which I discuss and try to solve in this paper. These are including the problem of indirect interactions with the virtual environment (via interface), the difficulty in defining the agent, and the allegations of non-physicality and fictionality of the virtual world. I define an agent as a close-coupled system: man-avatar, in which the avatar is a virtual body, while the human is the part in which cognitive processes take place and which puts the virtual body into motion. Finally, I propose a new term for affordances in a virtual environment – teleaffordances.

Keywords: Affordances, Virtual Environment, VR, Virtual, Sense of Embodiment