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Virtual reality systems typically allow users to physically walk and turn, but virtual environments (VEs) often exceed the available walking space. Teleporting has become a common user interface, whereby the user aims a laser pointer to indicate the desired location, and sometimes orientation, in the VE before being transported without self-motion cues. This study evaluated the influence of rotational self-motion cues on spatial updating performance when teleporting, and whether the importance of rotational cues varies across movement scale and environment scale. Participants performed a triangle completion task by teleporting along two outbound path legs before pointing to the unmarked path origin. Rotational self-motion reduced overall errors across all levels of movement scale and environment scale, though it also introduced a slight bias toward under-rotation. The importance of rotational self-motion was exaggerated when navigating large triangles and when the surrounding environment was large. Navigating a large triangle within a small VE brought participants closer to surrounding landmarks and boundaries, which led to greater reliance on piloting (landmark-based navigation) and therefore reduced-but did not eliminate-the impact of rotational self-motion cues. These results indicate that rotational self-motion cues are important when teleporting, and that navigation can be improved by enabling piloting.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jonathan_kelly/49/
This is a manuscript of an article published as Kelly, Jonathan W., Alec G. Ostrander, Alex F. Lim, Lucia A. Cherep, and Stephen B. Gilbert. "Teleporting through virtual environments: Effects of path scale and environment scale on spatial updating." IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 26, no. 5 (2020): 1841-1850. DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2020.2973051. Posted with permission.