title: The influence of restricted viewing conditions on egocentric distance perception: implications for real and virtual indoor environments.
abstract: We carried out three experiments to examine the influence of field of view and binocular viewing restrictions on absolute distance perception in real-world indoor environments. Few of the classical visual cues provide direct information for accurate absolute distance judgments to points in the environment beyond about 2 m from the viewer. Nevertheless, in previous work it has been found that visually directed walking tasks reveal accurate distance estimations in full-cue real-world environments to distances up to 20 m. In contrast, the same tasks in virtual environments produced with head-mounted displays (HMDs) show large compression of distance. Field of view and binocular viewing are common limitations in research with HMDs, and have been rarely studied under full pictorial-cue conditions in the context of distance perception in the real-world. Experiment 1 showed that the view of one's body and feet on the floor was not necessary for accurate distance perception. In experiment 2 we manipulated the horizontal and the vertical field of view along with head rotation and found that a restricted field of view did not affect the accuracy of distance estimations when head movement was allowed. Experiment 3 showed that performance with monocular viewing was equal to that with binocular viewing. These results have implications for the information needed to scale egocentric distance in the real-world and reduce the support for the hypothesis that a limited field of view or imperfections in binocular image presentation are the cause of the underestimation seen with HMDs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. sarah.creem@psych.utah.edu
authors.forename: Sarah H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Creem-Regehr
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Willemsen
authors.forename: Amy A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Gooch
authors.forename: William B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Thompson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D004215:Distance Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D019416:Head Movements / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D012683:Sensory Deprivation / Q000502:physiology; D015348:Vision, Binocular / Q000502:physiology; D015349:Vision, Monocular / Q000502:physiology; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology