The effect of navigation method and visual display on distance perception in a large-scale virtual building

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Virtual Reality Research
• Spatial Cognition

Background:

• Immersive virtual reality (VR) is crucial for spatial cognition research.
• Simulating large-scale walking in limited physical spaces presents a challenge.
• Various VR movement interfaces exist, but their effect on distance perception is unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how visual display, proprioception, and optic flow influence distance perception in VR.
• To compare four movement methods: real-world walking, VR-treadmill, VR-touchpad, and VR-teleportation.
• To determine the impact of movement methods on spatial learning and distance estimation accuracy.

Main Methods:

• Eighty participants navigated a large-scale building either physically or virtually.
• Virtual navigation employed VR-treadmill, VR-touchpad, and VR-teleportation interfaces.
• Analysis focused on perceived, traversed, and environmental distance estimates.

Main Results:

• Visual display significantly affected perceived and traversed distances, but not environmental estimates.
• Proprioception and optic flow did not alter overall distance perception accuracy.
• Intermittent optic flow (VR-teleportation) reduced the precision of traversed distance estimates.

Conclusions:

• Movement method significantly influences distance perception in virtual environments.
• VR-touchpad offers an effective interface for virtual navigation.
• Despite perceptual differences, configurational knowledge of large-scale spaces remains consistent across methods.