Virtual reality users are susceptible to disorientation, particularly when using locomotion interfaces that lack self-motion cues. Environmental cues, such as boundaries defined by walls or a fence, provide information to help the user remain oriented. This experiment evaluated whether the type of boundary impacts its usefulness for staying oriented. Participants wore a head-mounted display and performed a triangle completion task in virtual reality by traveling two outbound path segments before attempting to point to the path origin. The task was completed with two teleporting interfaces differing in the availability of rotational self-motion cues, and within five virtual environments differing in the availability and type of boundaries. Pointing errors were highest in an open field without environmental cues, and lowest in a classroom with walls and landmarks. Environments with a single square boundary defined by a fence, drop-off, or floor texture discontinuity led to errors in between the open field and the classroom. Performance with the floor texture discontinuity was similar to that with navigational barriers (i.e., fence and drop-off), indicating that an effective barrier need not be a navigational impediment. These results inform spatial cognitive theory about boundary-based navigation and inform application by specifying the types of environmental and self-motion cues that designers of virtual environments should include to reduce disorientation in virtual reality.
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Boundaries facilitate spatial orientation in virtual environments
Teleporting is a popular interface for locomotion through virtual environments (VEs). However, teleporting can cause disorientation. Spatial boundaries, such as room walls, are effective cues for reducing disorientation. This experiment explored the characteristics that make a boundary effective. All boundaries tested reduced disorientation, and boundaries representing navigational barriers (e.g., a fence) were no more effective than those defined only by texture changes (e.g., flooring transition). The findings indicate that boundaries need not be navigational barriers to reduce disorientation, giving VE designers greater flexibility in the spatial cues to include.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1816029
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10378740
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- SUI '21: Symposium on Spatial User Interaction
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 10:1-2
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Virtual environments (VEs) can be infinitely large, but movement of the virtual reality (VR) user is constrained by the surrounding real environment. Teleporting has become a popular locomotion interface to allow complete exploration of the VE. To teleport, the user selects the intended position (and sometimes orientation) before being instantly transported to that location. However, locomotion interfaces such as teleporting can cause disorientation. This experiment explored whether practice and feedback when using the teleporting interface can reduce disorientation. VR headset owners participated remotely. On each trial of a triangle completion task, the participant traveled along two path legs through a VE before attempting to point to the path origin. Travel was completed with one of two teleporting interfaces that differed in the availability of rotational self-motion cues. Participants in the feedback condition received feedback about their pointing accuracy. For both teleporting interfaces tested, feedback caused significant improvement in pointing performance, and practice alone caused only marginal improvement. These results suggest that disorientation in VR can be reduced through feedback-based training.more » « less
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Reorientation enables navigators to regain their bearings after becoming lost. Disoriented individuals primarily reorient themselves using the geometry of a layout, even when other informative cues, such as landmarks, are present. Yet the specific strategies that animals use to determine geometry are unclear. Moreover, because vision allows subjects to rapidly form precise representations of objects and background, it is unknown whether it has a deterministic role in the use of geometry. In this study, we tested sighted and congenitally blind mice ( Ns = 8–11) in various settings in which global shape parameters were manipulated. Results indicated that the navigational affordances of the context—the traversable space—promote sampling of boundaries, which determines the effective use of geometric strategies in both sighted and blind mice. However, blind animals can also effectively reorient themselves using 3D edges by extensively patrolling the borders, even when the traversable space is not limited by these boundaries.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3485279.3488284
