Minication affects action-based distance judgments in oculus rift HMDs

Distance perception is a crucial component for many virtual reality applications, and numerous studies have shown that egocentric distances are judged to be compressed in head-mounted display (HMD) systems. Geometric minification, a technique where the graphics are rendered with a field of view that larger than the HMD's field of view, is one known method of eliminating the distance compression [Kuhl et al. 2009; Zhang et al. 2012]. This study uses direct blind walking to determine how minification might impact distance judgments in the Oculus Rift HMD which has a significantly larger FOV than previous minification studies. Our results show that people were able to make accurate distance judgments in a calibrated condition and that geometric minification causes people to overestimate distances. Since this study shows that minification can impact wide FOV displays such as the Oculus, we discuss how it may be necessary to use calibration techniques which are more thorough than those described in this paper.