Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p> <bold>Background</bold> . Virtual field trips are commonly evaluated through visual fidelity, presence, usability, and learning outcomes, but these criteria do not establish whether a virtual environment preserves the evidentiary conditions of scientific inquiry. <bold>Methods</bold> . A structured integrative conceptual synthesis was conducted across 31 foundational and contemporary sources spanning virtual fieldwork, authentic and immersive learning, scientific observation, professional vision, epistemic action, evidence construction, and multisensory virtual reality. Sources were purposively identified through targeted scholarly searches and citation chaining, then coded comparatively for the scientific objects made available, learner actions supported, sensory channels represented, uncertainty preserved, and links between observation, evidence, and explanation. <bold>Results</bold> . The synthesis produced five analytically distinct dimensions of authenticity—visual, sensory, experiential, task, and epistemic—and an epistemic mediation framework tracing how physical environments are transformed through capture, modelling, interface design, learner action, evidence evaluation, and scientific explanation. It also identified seven forms of epistemic distortion, ten design principles, and a preliminary operational framework for evaluating virtual field trips. Smell is analysed as a revealing case showing that sensory cues can be decorative, contextual, or epistemic depending on their role in the task. <bold>Conclusions</bold> . Virtual field trips should not be judged by sensory completeness or photorealism alone. Their educational quality depends on whether design choices preserve, disclose, or responsibly reconstruct the observations, uncertainties, epistemic actions, and evidentiary relations needed for disciplinary knowing. </p>