Threefolded motion perception during immersive walkthroughs

Abstract

Locomotion is one of the most fundamental processes in the real world, and its consideration in immersive virtual environments (IVEs) is of major importance for many application domains requiring immersive walkthroughs. From a simple physics perspective, such self-motion can be defined by the three components speed, distance, and time. Determining motions in the frame of reference of a human observer imposes a significant challenge to the perceptual processes in the human brain, and the resulting speed, distance, and time percepts are not always veridical. In previous work in the area of IVEs, these components were evaluated in separate experiments, i. e., using largely different hardware, software and protocols. In this paper we analyze the perception of the three components of locomotion during immersive walkthroughs using the same setup and similar protocols. We conducted experiments in an Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD) environment which showed that subjects largely underestimated virtual distances, slightly underestimated virtual speed, and we observed that subjects slightly overestimated elapsed time.