Distortion in perceived size and body-based scaling in virtual environments

In this paper, we report findings pertaining to the size perception of objects and hands in a Virtual Environment(VE). First, we found that size perception is distorted in a VE and the effect is different between objects and hands. We perceive our virtual hands as larger and objects as smaller in VEs than in real environments(REs). However, when hands interact with objects, our body is used as a metric to scale the apparent sizes of objects in the environment (body-based scaling; BBS). We also found that not only does the size of our hands influence the perceived size of the environment, but the size of familiar-sized objects influences the perceived size of our hands as well. In summary, in contrast to the independent traits of size perception of hands and objects in VEs, we tend to perceive the size based on what we see at first, either hands or objects, when we interact with the objects. These findings provide a benchmark for scale adjustment for interactive scale-sensitive virtual reality applications so as to create perceptually more precise representations of virtual objects and bodies.