Compression Rates and Spatial Judgment Biases Made from Synthetic Vision Perspective Displays

Abstract

In this work, the relationship between error in human spatial judgments made from perspective displays with the compression rates used to represent the judged spatial quantities was investigated. Two-dimensional perspective displays are often used to represent three-dimensional information to humans. Such displays can use different compression rates (actual distance conveyed per unit of screen distance) for identical spatial quantities. An existing data set was used, in which spatial judgments (relative distance, angle, and elevation) were made about the relative location of a terrain point shown on a simulated aircraft synthetic vision systems display. The correlations between compression rates and associated judgment error were then measured. Correlations were computed for average participant judgments as well as for each participant, from which an average correlation was computed. Significant negative correlations were found between compression rates and judgment error for all of the analyzed spatial judgments. These were particularly strong for relative distance judgment error. There were noticeable differences between the correlations of averages and the associated average correlations. Results indicate that compression rates bias the analyzed spatial judgments. However, there are significant individual differences in how the compression rates appear to impact judgment error.