Effects of scene density and richness on traveled distance estimation in virtual environments

We conducted an experiment to examine the effects of scene density and richness on people's estimates of traveled distance. Participants wearing HMDs first experienced vision-only simulated self-motion over the distance of 65 meters in either a feature-dense scene (condition 1) or a sparse scene (condition 2), and then attempted to reproduce the same distance by physically walking with vision in a neutral virtual scene. We found that participants' estimates in the first condition were significantly shorter than those in the second condition. Furthermore, condition 1 estimates were significantly below the actual 65m travel distance, while condition 2 estimates did not differ significantly from 65m. The results suggest that scene feature density and richness affect traveled distance estimation.