Side-by-Side Comparison of Human Perception and Performance Using Augmented, Hybrid, and Virtual Reality

Alternative reality (XR) technologies, including physical, augmented, hybrid, and virtual reality, offer ways for engineered spaces to be evaluated. Traditionally, practitioners (such as those designing spacecraft habitats) have relied on physical mockups to perform such design evaluations, but digital XR technologies present several streamlining advantages over their physical counterparts. These digital environments vary in their level of virtuality, and consequently have different effects on human perception and performance, with respect to a completely physical mockup environment. To date, very little has been done to characterize and quantify such differences in human perception and performance across XR environments of equal fidelity for the same end application. Here, we show that perception and performance in the virtual reality environment most closely mirror those in the physical reality environment, as measured through volumetric assessment and functional task experiments. These experiments required subjects to judge the dimensions of 3D objects and perform operational tasks presented via checklists. Our results highlight the potential for virtual reality systems to accelerate the iterative design of engineered spaces relative to the use of physical mockups, while preserving the human perception and performance characteristics of a completely physical environment. These findings also elucidate specific advantages and disadvantages to specific digital XR technologies with respect to one another and the physical reality baseline. Practitioners may inform their selection of an XR modality for their specific end application based on this comparative analysis, as it contextualizes the niche for each technology in the realm of iterative design for engineered spaces.