THE PERCEPTION OF SPATIAL LAYOUT IN REAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDS

As human-machine interfaces grow more immersive and graphically-orient ed, virtual environment systems become more prominent as the medium fo r human-machine communication. Often, virtual environments (VE) are bu ilt to provide exact metrical representations of existing or proposed physical spaces. However, it is not known how individuals develop repr esentational models of these spaces in which they are immersed and how those models may be distorted with respect to both the virtual and re al-world equivalents. To evaluate the process of model development, th e present experiment examined participant's ability to reproduce a com plex spatial layout of objects having experienced them previously unde r different viewing conditions. The layout consisted of nine common ob jects arranged on a flat plane. These objects could be viewed in a fre e binocular virtual condition, a free binocular real-world condition, and in a static monocular view of the real world. The first two allowe d active exploration of the environment while the latter condition all owed the participant only a passive opportunity to observe from a sing le viewpoint. Viewing conditions were a between-subject variable with 10 participants randomly assigned to each condition. Performance was a ssessed using mapping accuracy and triadic comparisons of relative int er-object distances. Mapping results showed a significant effect of vi ewing condition where, interestingly, the static monocular condition w as superior to both the active virtual and real binocular conditions. Results for the triadic comparisons showed a significant interaction f or gender by viewing condition in which males were more accurate than females. These results suggest that the situation model resulting from interaction with a virtual environment was indistinguishable from int eraction with real objects at least within the constraints of the pres ent procedure.