Desktop VR Is Better Than Non-ambulatory HMD VR for Spatial Learning.

Priyanka Srivastava,Sushil Chandra,Shruti Singh,Palash Vijay,Anurag Rimzhim

doi:10.3389/frobt.2019.00050

Abstract

Use of virtual reality (VR) technology is proliferating for designing and upgrading entertainment devices, and creating virtual environments that could be used for research and training. VR is becoming a strong research tool by providing a tighter control on the experimental environment and by allowing almost limitless possibilities of creating ecologically valid stimuli. However, the enhanced fidelity between the real and virtual worlds that VR provides does not always benefit human performance. For a better understanding, and increasing VR's usability, we need to identify the relevant constituent components of immersive technologies, and differentiate their roles, for example, how visual and interaction fidelity differentially improves human performance. We conducted an experiment to examine how two common VR display modes, head mounted display (HMD) and desktop (DT), would affect spatial learning when we restrict ambulatory locomotion in HMD. This manipulation allowed examining the role of varying visual fidelity with low interaction fidelity. We used a between-group design with 40 naïve participants. They explored a virtual environment and later drew its sketch-map. Our results showed participants spent more time and perceived less motion-sickness and task effort using desktop than HMD VR. With reduced interaction fidelity, the high visual fidelity of HMD as compared to desktop resulted in similar or poorer performance on different spatial learning tasks after accounting for motion-sickness and workload effort. Participants were better in recalling spatial components related to junction and cyclic order of the navigated virtual space in desktop vs. HMD VR, and performed equally well on components related to street segments and object associations. We explain these results in terms of deficient idiothetic information in non-ambulatory HMD and lesser sensory conflicts in desktop mode. Overall, our results highlight the differential effect of visual vs. interaction fidelity on human performance based on using immersive technologies, how such an effect depends on the nature of cognitive and functional behavior users employ, and the higher usability of traditional desktop VR. These results are relevant for developing customized and sustainable virtual reality based human-computer interactions.

Highlights

Making sense of space is one of the fundamental exercises we perform every day, such as wayfinding, reading and interpreting visual maps, planning and utilizing mental maps, reaching out for or grasping and holding objects, etc
Since the four components represented different spatial information that were not directly comparable and because the maximum number of items that could be correctly recalled was different in each condition (SS = 21, JXN = 15, object associations (OA) = 10, CO = 4), we studied the effect of display condition separately on these spatial components by performing one-way ANCOVA for recall of each spatial component, with motion sickness and workload as covariates in these analyses
Our study shows that high visual fidelity of head mounted display (HMD) virtual reality (VR) in absence of high interaction fidelity makes it as good as if not worse than DT VR for spatial learning, and this effect depends on the nature of the studied behavior

Summary

Introduction

Making sense of space is one of the fundamental exercises we perform every day, such as wayfinding, reading and interpreting visual maps, planning and utilizing mental maps, reaching out for or grasping and holding objects, etc. The chief advantage that VR provides researchers and developers is to be able to create a setting with a high degree of control and treatment manipulation It provides new research avenues with umpteen possibilities to create stimuli that are more ecologically valid and to collect various types of response executed in different modalities (Wilson and Soranzo, 2015). This would help us to understand human cognition and behavior, and to train them, for example, for military combat and reconnaissance, medical surgical operations, driving scenarios, etc. A more ecologically valid setting may not always produce more ecologically valid responses

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