Virtual Reality Versus Real-World Space: Comparing Perceptions of Brightness, Glare, Spaciousness, and Visual Acuity

Virtual reality (VR) headsets exhibit great potential for conducting interior design research in immersive digital settings; however, additional studies are needed to map out limitations for their use to simulate real-world settings. We investigated how participant perceptions of a single interior environment varied among a real-world space (R) and two surrogate VR spaces (one made with 360° spherical photography and one made with 360° spherical digital rendering). A total of 42 undergraduate, interior design students were randomly assigned to one of two experiments, resulting in two groups of 21 students. Each participant completed a visual acuity task and evaluated perceived brightness, glare, and spaciousness within the real-world space and one of the two surrogate VR environments. Participants reported acceptable baseline levels of perceived realism in both VR environments. There was no significant difference between the rendered-VR simulation and real-world space for brightness, glare, and spaciousness, while the photographed-VR simulation was seen as significantly brighter and glaring. Performance on the visual acuity task was significantly lower in both VR simulations than in the real-world-approximating the difference between 20/20 and 20/60 vision. Implications and strategies for effective deployment of VR simulations in interior design research are discussed.