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This paper presents the results of a study investigating the impact of misaligned idiotropic and visual axes on spatial ability in a simulated microgravity environment in virtual reality. The study involved 99 participants who completed two spatial tests, the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations and the Perspective Taking Ability test, in three different scenarios: control (axes aligned), static misalignment, and dynamic misalignment. The results showed that dynamic misalignment significantly impacted mental rotation and spatial visualization performance, but not spatial orientation ability. Additionally, the gaming experience did not moderate mental rotation outcomes but did enhance spatial orientation ability. These findings provide insight into how altered visuospatial conditions may affect human spatial cognition and can inform the development of simulation-based training tools to help people adapt to such environments more effectively. Furthermore, the study highlights the potential of using games as a learning tool to improve productivity and safety in extreme or altered work environments. 

Emerging technologies offer the potential to expand the domain of the future workforce to extreme environments, such as outer space and alien terrains. To understand how humans navigate in such environments that lack familiar spatial cues this study examined spatial perception in three types of environments. The environments were simulated using virtual reality. We examined participants’ ability to estimate the size and distance of stimuli under conditions of minimal, moderate, or maximum visual cues, corresponding to an environment simulating outer space, an alien terrain, or a typical cityscape, respectively. The findings show underestimation of distance in both the maximum and the minimum visual cue environment but a tendency for overestimation of distance in the moderate environment. We further observed that depth estimation was substantially better in the minimum environment than in the other two environments. However, estimation of height was more accurate in the environment with maximum cues (cityscape) than the environment with minimum cues (outer space). More generally, our results suggest that familiar visual cues facilitated better estimation of size and distance than unfamiliar cues. In fact, the presence of unfamiliar, and perhaps misleading visual cues (characterizing the alien terrain environment), was more disruptive than an environment with a total absence of visual cues for distance and size perception. The findings have implications for training workers to better adapt to extreme environments. 

The purpose of this study is to understand how spatial ability differs under extreme environments and to provide implications on individually relevant training approaches by using VR technologies. Special jobs under extreme conditions (e.g., astronaut or scuba diver) demand higher spatial ability and effective spatial strategy. This paper examines how the conflicts between visual vertical and the body vertical may affect spatial ability. In addition, the study tested the relationship between an individual’s tendency to adopt a certain spatial strategy (egocentric vs. allocentric) and their use of a particular spatial reference frame (body vs. visual) under the extreme condition.