From bowman@cc.gatech.edu Wed Jul 8 15:13:11 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 PAA17103 for ; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:13:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (lHRPnkEqB92WK7XwPAH2Lcv5K9dRwO7Q@[128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id PAA06024 for ; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:13:08 -0400 (EDT) Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id MAA05381 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 12:13:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lennon.cc.gatech.edu (bowman@lennon.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.9.20]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id PAA06013 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:13:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from bowman@localhost) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) id PAA17097 for 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:12:59 -0400 (EDT) From: bowman@cc.gatech.edu (Doug Bowman) Message-Id: <199807081912.PAA17097@lennon.cc.gatech.edu> Subject: Re: comparing travel techniques for spatial orientation To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu (3D UI List) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:12:59 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <61AC5C9A4B9CD11181A200805F57CD5404326C1F@red-msg-44.dns.microsoft.com> from "Jeff Pierce" at Jul 8, 98 11:00:28 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Status: RO A while back, Jeff Pierce wrote: > > It's been awfully quiet lately - Jeff P. must be working hard or > > on vacation... :-) > > Hey, I resemble that remark! What - that you were working hard?? :) > 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 Yes, I've read Loomis et al's paper in Presence, and it was part of the inspiration for the current work. As you said, they found (nominally) that the physical walking technique allowed users to remain more spatially oriented. My question was then this: Since most of us don't have the luxury of allowing users to physically walk through our environments (because the env. is too large, we don't have a good enough tracker, or simply not enough physical space), can I show that there are certain virtual movement techniques that produce as good of a result as the physical walking technique? As Jeff said, the main component of such a technique that will help is that rotation is still done physically. But, in order to judge directions accurately, the user must also have a sense of the distance translated. Which virtual techniques do this the best? > 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. This is an interesting question, but not really my main concern. I think this has already been answered to some degree (e.g. the paper mentioned earlier and a couple of papers at this year's VRAIS on proprioceptive and vestibular cues in VEs). I'm wondering what effect the interaction technique itself has on spatial orientation, assuming that we cannot provide translation feedback (no physical walking), and that rotation feedback is given by physical turning. This leaves the cognitive aspect to be explored. Looking at my travel technique taxonomy (see the list archives), it seemed that the level of automation of motion was an obvious technique component that could have an effect on the cognitive processes used in spatial updating. > > 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. Yes, I'll definitely look for some papers here. I've read a couple of Hunt's articles (including one in the same issue of Presence on navigation in VEs). His main thrust was looking at the acquisition of path knowledge using VEs as compared to maps and real-world training. It's some interesting reading. The reason I think my experiment is interesting (well, I have to think it's interesting - I came up with it! :) ) is that most of the studies I've seen compare VEs to some other methods, such as the maps and real-world training in Hunt's experiment, but don't address how motion in the VE should be done in the first place. Instead, they assume some typical travel technique, such as gaze- directed steering, and compare this to the other methods in order to draw some generalization about the effectiveness of VEs. I would argue that before we can do that, we need to how to optimize spatial orientation (or any other performance value you're interested in) in VEs, and then put the best possible VE up against non-VE techniques. Loomis and Chance did this to a certain extent by comparing three interaction techniques distinguished by the level of physical motion involved in them. The current experiment is attempting to do the same thing for techniques by the level of system automation of motion. OK, I'm off my soapbox. What do people think of the notion that travel interaction technique might affect spatial orientation? What characteristics of the technique do you think are most likely to have a large effect? If travel technique is not that important, what other factors might be (e.g. maps, path complexity, etc.)? --Doug -- Doug Bowman, Ph.D. Candidate College of Computing, GVU Center, Georgia Tech Room 388 CRB, (404) 894-5104 bowman@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Phd/Doug.Bowman/