Investigating movement through smoke in virtual reality

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Accurately estimating movement through smoke is critical for fire safety design. However, physical laboratory experiments using artificial smoke can be very expensive. Virtual reality (VR) can potentially be an alternative method to cheaply investigate movement through smoke. The primary objective of this study is to determine the relationship between movement speed and visibility in VR. The secondary objective was to compare movement through smoke in VR to existing experimental data. Five scenarios were tested: real-world unimpeded movement, unimpeded movement in VR, and movement in VR with virtual smoke reducing the visibility to 3.5 m, 2.5 m, and 1.5 m. A wireless head mounted display was used to immerse participants in the virtual environment. For the study, 42 participants experienced the smoke scenarios in a random order. The results indicate that movement speed decreased with visibility, but to a lesser extent than in previous physical laboratory experiments with artificial smoke. Unimpeded movement in VR was shown to be significantly slower than real-world unimpeded movement. Prior experience with VR was not shown to have a significant impact on unimpeded VR movement speed. Increasing the realism of the virtual environment could potentially better align results from VR experiments with past physical laboratory experiments.