research-article

The Effects of Visual Realism on Spatial Memory and Exploration Patterns in Virtual Reality

Authors:

Alexander KlippelAuthors Info & Claims

VRST '20: Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology

Article No.: 18, Pages 1 - 11

https://doi.org/10.1145/3385956.3418945

Published: 01 November 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Understanding the effects of environmental features such as visual realism on spatial memory can inform a human-centered design of virtual environments. This paper investigates the effects of visual realism on object location memory in virtual reality, taking account of individual differences, gaze, and locomotion. Participants freely explored two environments which varied in visual realism, and then recalled the locations of objects by returning the misplaced objects back to original locations. Overall, we did not find a significant relationship between visual realism and object location memory. We found, however, that individual differences such as spatial ability and gender accounted for more variance than visual realism. Gaze and locomotion analysis suggest that participants exhibited longer gaze duration and more clustered movement patterns in the low realism condition. Preliminary inspection further found that locomotion hotspots coincided with objects that showed a significant gaze time difference between high and low visual realism levels. These results suggest that high visual realism still provides positive spatial learning affordances but the effects are more intricate.

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cover image ACM Conferences

VRST '20: Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology

November 2020

429 pages

ISBN:9781450376198

DOI:10.1145/3385956

Editors:
Robert J. Teather
Carleton University, Canada
,
Chris Joslin
Carleton University, Canada
,
Wolfgang Stuerzlinger
Simon Fraser University, Canada
,
Pablo Figueroa
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
,
Yaoping Hu
University of Calgary, Canada
,
Anil Ufuk Batmaz
Simon Fraser University, Canada
,
Wonsook Lee
University of Ottawa, Canada
,
Francisco Ortega
Colorado State University, USA

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Published: 01 November 2020

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