Minification affects verbal- and action-based distance judgments differently in head-mounted displays

Abstract

Numerous studies report that people underestimate egocentric distances in Head-Mounted Display (HMD) virtual environments compared to real environments as measured by direct blind walking. Geometric minification, or rendering graphics with a larger field of view than the display's field of view, has been shown to eliminate this underestimation in a virtual hallway environment [Kuhl et al. 2006[Kuhl et al. , 2009. This study demonstrates that minification affects blind walking in a sparse classroom and does not influence verbal reports of distance. Since verbal reports of distance have been reported to be compressed in real environments, we speculate that minification in an HMD replicates peoples' real-world blind walking and verbal report distance judgments. We also demonstrate a new method for quantifying any unintentional miscalibration in our experiments. This process involves using the HMD in an augmented reality configuration and having each participant indicate where the targets and horizon appeared after each experiment. More work is necessary to understand how and why minification changes verbal-and walking-based egocentric distance judgments differently.

The perception of egocentric distances in virtual environments - A review

“…With HMDs, this can be difficult as the values in the manufacturers' specifications for the display FOV (DFOV) of the specific HMD can differ from the actual values [Kuhl et al 2009;Stanney et al 1998;]. If the GFOV settings do not correspond to the DFOV of the HMD, images are minified or magnified, which was repeatedly shown to influence participants' distance estimates Kellner et al 2012;Kuhl et al 2006bKuhl et al , 2009Zhang et al 2012]. On the other hand, Walker et al…”

Minication affects action-based distance judgments in oculus rift HMDs

“…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.…”

A perceptual calibration method to ameliorate the phenomenon of non-size-constancy in hetereogeneous VR displays

“…Other methods use a "computer vision" approach applying perspective projection adjustments: Minification is a method which compresses the imaginary to artificially increasing the FOV of a display, and its application can improve distance perception ( [8], [28], [10]). Lowering the horizon is another similar method which had good results ( [14], [19]).…”