Distance Estimation in a VR Application : Interindividual Differences and Intraindividual Stabilities from a Psychological Point of View

Virtual environments (VE) open up a wide range of experimental possibilities in psychological research (Loomis & Blaskovich, 1999). However, when using Virtual Reality (VR) applications it is often neither possible nor useful to use environments with many secondary depth cues though those are essential for depth perception in virtual worlds (Gobbetti & Scateni, 1998). Depth-cue deprived experimental setups are often necessary to avoid visual overload in experiments where attention is supposed to be focused on single targets e.g. when simple reactions to stimuli are required or when virtual targets have to be grasped or pointed at. Some studies investigated the role of depth cues in VE (e.g. Gaggioli & Breining, 2001; Hu, Gooch, Creem-Regehr & Thomson, 2002), but only one single evidence was found for interindividual differences (Lampton, McDonald & Singer, 1995) and none for stability of depth perception within persons. Yet, these aspects are relevant for psychological research conducted in VE to create expedient setups and because of their importance in obtaining valid results. Therefore two studies were carried out to investigate whether distance estimations are stable within subjects’ own frame of reference and whether interindividual differences exist when a geometrically simple virtual environment is used. The first experiment was conducted in a VR application (3D) and the second one on a standard CRT screen (2D). Results reveal systematic underestimations but also indicate intraindividual stabilities. Furthermore it seems to be useful to enrich the environments with reference objects to enable “more accurate” distance estimations.

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