I see the big difference between the past and present tenses not as immediacy but as complexity and size of field. A story told in the present tense is necessarily focused on action in a single time and therefore a single place. Use of the past tense(s) allows continual referring back and forth in time and space. That’s how our minds normally work, moving around easily. Only in emergency situations do they focus very tightly on what’s going on. And so narration in the present tense sets up a kind of permanent artificial emergency, which can be exactly the right tone for fast-paced action.
