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Walking on foot to explore a virtual environment with uneven terrain

Published: 13 November 2015 Publication History

Abstract

In this work we examine people's ability to maintain spatial awareness of an HMD--based immersive virtual environment when the terrain of the virtual world does not match the real physical world in which they are locomoting. More specifically, we examine what happens when a subject explores a hilly virtual environment while physically walking in a flat room. In our virtual environments, subjects maintain their height (or distance to the ground plane) at all times. In the experiment described in this work, we directly compare spatial orientation in a flat virtual environment to two variations of a hilly virtual environment. Interestingly, we find that subjects' spatial awareness of the environment is improved with the addition of uneven terrain.

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  • (2018)Operationalizing height and scale in room-scale virtual realityProceedings of the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3240167.3240254(716-720)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2018

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    VRST '15: Proceedings of the 21st ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology
    November 2015
    237 pages
    ISBN:9781450339902
    DOI:10.1145/2821592
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    Published: 13 November 2015

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    Author Tags

    1. spatial orientation
    2. virtual environments

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    • (2018)Operationalizing height and scale in room-scale virtual realityProceedings of the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3240167.3240254(716-720)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2018

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