Judging action capabilities in augmented reality

The utility of mediated environments increases when environmental scale (size and distance) is perceived accurately. We present the use of perceived affordances---judgments of action capabilities---as an objective way to assess space perception in an augmented reality (AR) environment. The current study extends the previous use of this methodology in virtual reality (VR) to AR. We tested two locomotion-based affordance tasks. In the first experiment, observers judged whether they could pass through a virtual aperture presented at different widths and distances, and also judged the distance to the aperture. In the second experiment, observers judged whether they could step over a virtual gap on the ground. In both experiments, the virtual objects were displayed with the HoloLens in a real laboratory environment. We demonstrate that affordances for passing through and perceived distance to the aperture are similar in AR to those measured in the real world, but that judgments of gap-crossing in AR were underestimated. These differences across two affordances may result from the different spatial characteristics of the virtual objects (on the ground versus extending off the ground).