From t-jeffp@microsoft.com Wed Jul 8 14:01:14 1998 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id OAA14169 for ; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 14:01:12 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (wv9eoGwjJ/LcUyRCh3NoXRg3EPPnM2G6@[128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id OAA27031 for ; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 14:01:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mail5.microsoft.com (mail5.microsoft.com [131.107.3.121]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id LAA09065 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:01:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: by INET-IMC-05 with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2328.0) id <3P4RMKKQ>; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:00:31 -0700 Message-ID: <61AC5C9A4B9CD11181A200805F57CD5404326C1F@red-msg-44.dns.microsoft.com> From: Jeff Pierce To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu Subject: RE: comparing travel techniques for spatial orientation Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:00:28 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2328.0) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Status: RO > -----Original Message----- > From: bowman@cc.gatech.edu [mailto:bowman@cc.gatech.edu] > Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 1998 12:26 PM > To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu > Subject: comparing travel techniques for spatial orientation > > > Hi everyone, > > It's been awfully quiet lately - Jeff P. must be working hard or > on vacation... :-) Hey, I resemble that remark! I was going to just let Ken's reply stand (since I agree with what he said), but with this sort of challenge I'll expand a little on his remarks. > The basic task is this: the user moves through a virtual corridor > in which there are 3 easily recognizable objects. At the end > of the corridor, the user is asked to point in the direction of > one of these objects to measure his/her spatial orientation. > The catch is that the corridor and objects disappear, so the user > has to rely on his mental map of the corridor and the objects > within it. Jack Loomis (at UCSD, I believe) and Sarah Chance (one of his grad students) is doing some work similar to these. They have users navigate a maze filled with objects, and then after traversing the maze try to point to the objects. As I recall, they're looking at 3 main conditions: the user walks around the virtual space, the user sits down and translates using a joystick but physically turns their body for rotations, and the user sits down and uses the joystick for both translation and rotation. What they found is that basically that your spatial orientation is more or less preserved whether you walk or translate using the joystick, but for accurate spatial orientation you need to turn physically, not using the joystick. So the vestibular system is apparently a key system for spatial updating. Denny Proffitt has also been doing some work on spatial updating (keeping your image of the space you're in current as you move through it), but the results haven't been published yet. > [techniques with different levels of automation munched] > I think there are some interesting tradeoffs here. The pointing > technique gives users control, which may give them better information > for contructing their mental map (for example, they get a > proprioceptive > cue for their direction of motion from their hand). They also > have to expend conscious effort to traverse the corridor, which > may be a good reinforcement for their mental map. On the other hand, > the cognitive effort required may displace path/object information > in working memory. Seems like what you might want to do here is a comparison between vestibular, proprioceptive, and cognitive cues to see which is the winner. My suspicion is that if users are turning corners in the corridor that cognitive will be worse than proprioceptive which will be worse than vestibular. > One more question: what would you consider to be a "good" score > for the pointing task? 10 degrees off? 30 degrees? 60? As Ken suggested, the spatial updating and spatial orientation literature in perceptual psychology is probably a good place to start for this info. Jack Loomis has recently published some of his latest work in Presence. I know that Earl ("Buz") Hunt at UW is also doing some work in this area, but I haven't read any of his papers yet. Hope that helps, Jeff