Calibration and evaluation of virtual environment displays

Designing safe and effective virtual environment (VE) systems requires human factors research to produce specifications for VE systems that are based on sensory and perceptual requirements necessary for optimal human performance. Part of this research requires establishing performance benchmarks, established in physical environments, with which to compare performance in virtual environments. The authors present two studies in which they used benchmarks based on two fundamental perceptual and motor components of spatial perception and orientation. (1) A virtual visual display was calibrated by comparing the accuracy of pointing to targets in physical and virtual environments. (2) The authors assessed the degree to which a VE represented a physical environment by comparing users' judgments of target direction in the two environments. They discuss implications of the research for the design of VEs.<>