skip to main content


Search for: All records

Award ID contains: 1816029

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. 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
  2. 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. 
    more » « less
  3. 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. 
    more » « less
  4. Stephanidis, Constantine ; Antona, Margherita ; Ntoa, Stavroula (Ed.)
    There are several barriers to research translation from academia to the broader HCI/UX community and specifically for the design of virtual reality applications. Because of the inaccessibility of evidence-based VR research to industry practitioners, freely-available blog-style media on platforms like Medium, where there is no moderation, is more available, leading to the spread of misinformation. The Design of Virtual Environments (DOVE) website, attempts to address this challenge by offering peer reviewed unbiased VR research, translating it for the layperson, and opening it up to contribution, synthesis and discussion through forums. This paper describes the initial user centered design process for the DOVE website through informal expert interviews, competitive analysis and heuristic review to redesign the site navigation, translation content, and incentivized forms for submission of research. When completed, the DOVE website will aid the translation of AR/VR research to practice. 
    more » « less
  5. null (Ed.)
    The number of people who own a virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) has reached a point where researchers can readily recruit HMD owners to participate remotely using their own equipment. However, HMD owners recruited online may differ from the university community members who typically participate in VR research. HMD owners (n=220) and non-owners (n=282) were recruited through two online work sites-Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Prolific-and an undergraduate participant pool. Participants completed a survey in which they provided demographic information and completed measures of HMD use, video game use, spatial ability, and motion sickness susceptibility. In the context of the populations sampled, the results provide 1) a characterization of HMD owners, 2) a snapshot of the most commonly owned HMDs, 3) a comparison between HMD owners and non-owners, and 4) a comparison among online workers and undergraduates. Significant gender differences were found: men reported lower motion sickness susceptibility and more video game hours than women, and men outperformed women on spatial tasks. Men comprised a greater proportion of HMD owners than non-owners, but after accounting for this imbalance, HMD owners did not differ appreciably from non-owners. Comparing across recruitment platform, male undergraduates outperformed male online workers on spatial tests, and female undergraduates played fewer video game hours than female online workers. The data removal rate was higher from Amazon compared to Prolific, possibly reflecting greater dishonesty. These results provide a description of HMD users that can inform researchers recruiting remote participants through online work sites. These results also signal a need for caution when comparing in-person VR research that primarily enrolls undergraduates to online VR research that enrolls online workers. 
    more » « less
  6. null (Ed.)
    The proliferation of locomotion interfaces for virtual reality necessitates a framework for predicting and evaluating navigational success. Spatial updating-the process of mentally updating one's self-location during locomotion-is a core component of navigation, is easy to measure, and is sensitive to common elements of locomotion interfaces. This paper highlights three factors that influence spatial updating: body-based self-motion cues, environmental cues, and characteristics of the individual. The concordance framework, which characterizes locomotion interfaces based on agreement between body movement and movement through the environment, serves as a useful starting point for understanding the effectiveness of locomotion interfaces for enabling accurate navigation. 
    more » « less
  7. null (Ed.)
    Teleporting interfaces are widely used in virtual reality applications to explore large virtual environments. When teleporting, the user indicates the intended location in the virtual environment and is instantly transported, typically without self-motion cues. This project explored the cost of teleporting on the acquisition of survey knowledge (i.e., a ”cognitive map”). Two teleporting interfaces were compared, one with and one without visual and body-based rotational self-motion cues. Both interfaces lacked translational self-motion cues. Participants used one of the two teleporting interfaces to find and study the locations of six objects scattered throughout a large virtual environment. After learning, participants completed two measures of cognitive map fidelity: an object-to-object pointing task and a map drawing task. The results indicate superior spatial learning when rotational self-motion cues were available. Therefore, virtual reality developers should strongly consider the benefits of rotational self-motion cues when creating and choosing locomotion interfaces. 
    more » « less