Walking through a virtual environment improves perceived size within and beyond the walked space

Area of Science:

• Virtual Reality
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Perception Psychology

Background:

• Distances are often underperceived in virtual environments (VEs), unlike in the real world.
• Interaction with continuous visual feedback in VEs can mitigate this underperception.
• Previous studies show mixed results on whether object size judgments benefit from interaction, impacting the understanding of space rescaling.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of interaction with feedback on virtual distance perception.
• To use a more natural measure of object size to assess improvements in perceived space.
• To determine if improved perception extends beyond the directly interacted-upon virtual space.

Main Methods:

• Participants interacted within a virtual environment with continuous visual feedback.
• Object size judgments were used as a measure of perceived space.
• Distance perception was assessed both within (1-5m) and beyond (7-11m) the interaction space.

Main Results:

• Object size judgments significantly benefited from interaction within the virtual environment.
• The positive effect of interaction on perception extended to distances beyond the explored 1-5m range.
• Virtual distance perception showed improvement even for distances not directly interacted with.

Conclusions:

• Interaction with continuous visual feedback in VEs enhances the perception of object size.
• This improvement in spatial perception is not limited to the immediate interaction area.
• Findings suggest that interaction can lead to a more accurate rescaling of perceived space in VEs.