Can People Not Tell Left from Right in VR? Point-to-origin Studies Revealed Qualitative Errors in Visual Path Integration

Even in state-of-the-art virtual reality (VR) setups, participants often feel lost when navigating through virtual environments. In psychological experiments, such disorientation is often compensated for by extensive training. The current study investigated participants’ sense of direction by means of a rapid point-to-origin task without any training or performance feedback. This allowed us to study participants’ intuitive spatial orientation in VR while minimizing the influence of higher cognitive abilities and compensatory strategies. After visually displayed passive excursions along oneor two-segment trajectories, participants were asked to point back to the origin of locomotion "as accurately and quickly as possible". Despite using a high-quality video projection with a 84◦ ×63◦ field of view, participants’ overall performance was rather poor. Moreover, six of the 16 participants exhibited striking qualitative errors, i.e., consistent left-right confusions t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: VR
• Authors: Bernhard E. Riecke, Jan Malte Wiener
• Keywords: Intuitive Spatial Orientation, Spatial Orientation, Study Investigated Participants, Virtual Reality, VR 2007