Avatar self-embodiment enhances distance perception accuracy in non-photorealistic immersive virtual environments

Non-photorealistically rendered (NPR) immersive virtual environments (IVEs) can facilitate conceptual design in architecture by enabling preliminary design sketches to be previewed and experienced at full scale, from a first-person perspective. However, it is critical to ensure the accurate spatial perception of the represented information, and many studies have shown that people typically underestimate distances in most IVEs, regardless of rendering style. In previous work we have found that while people tend to judge distances more accurately in an IVE that is a high-fidelity replica of their concurrently occupied real environment than in an IVE that it is a photorealistic representation of a real place that they've never been to, significant distance estimation errors re-emerge when the replica environment is represented in a NPR style. We have also previously found that distance estimation accuracy can be improved, in photo-realistically rendered novel virtual environments, w...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: VR
• Authors: Lane Phillips, Brian Ries, Michael Kaeding, Victoria Interrante
• Keywords: Avatar Self-embodiment, Replica, Virtual Environments, Virtual Reality, VR 2010