Egocentric distance judgments in a large screen display immersive virtual environment

Abstract

People underestimate egocentric distances in head-mounted display virtual environments, as compared to estimates done in the real world. Our work investigates whether distances are still compressed in a large screen display immersive virtual environment, where participants are able to see their own body surrounded by the virtual environment. We conducted our experiment in both the real world using a real room and the large screen display immersive virtual environment using a 3D model of the real room. Our results showed a significant underestimation of verbal reports of egocentric distances in the large screen display immersive virtual environment, while the distance judgments of the real world were closer to veridical. Moreover, we observed a significant effect of distances in both environments. In the real world closer distances were slightly underestimated, while further distances were slightly overestimated. In contrast to the real world in the virtual environment participants overestimated closer distances (up to 2.5m) and underestimated distances that were further than 3m. A possible reason for this effect of distances in the virtual environment may be that participants perceived stereo cues differently when the target was projected on the floor versus on the front of the large screen.