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It is well documented that within Virtual Environments performance in cognitive tasks is diminished, and with the continued use of such environments to train people in various skillsets it is important that this problem be addressed. In this thesis, two areas of spatial cognition are addressed: navigation and distance estimation. Unlike many previous studies, the experiments conducted here are in a large-scale virtual rural environment which poses problems due to the large distances involved and the unrestricted movement of people through it. A virtual representation of the Sorbas region in Spain was produced using Blueberry3D, VegaPrime and ArcMap. Attempts to improve performance were made by the display of information to the user: an overview map to aid in distance estimations; and geo-located 'factoids', or info-marks, to aid in navigation. Analysis was also performed to extract rural environment features that could fall into the classifications of the Urban Image Theory, and a novel visio-analytic approach conducted to analyse track log data collected from the navigation task. Results indicate that neither of the two tools implemented had much effect on user performance. However, a key finding was that the use of both quantitative and qualitative analysis is important in such research, as although quantitative analysis indicated only some significant results, the qualitative analysis highlighted that when the tools were presented users felt far more confident in their results. The visio-analytical approach adopted proved to be extremely useful in identifying performance characteristics that would have been missed by using quantitative analysis alone.
The purpose of this research was to assess the relationship between telepresence and performance in a synthetic environment. Telepresence is believed to be a mental construct and to enhance task performance in teleoperations and virtual environments. Consequently, it has been identified as a design ideal for synthetic environments. However, there is a limited understanding of telepresence and its relation to task performance. This research involved examination of a range of synthetic environment design features (e.g., viewpoint and auditory cue type) that were suspected to influence telepresence and compared differences in telepresence and task performance caused by manipulations of these factors and task difficulty. A simulated basketball free-throw task was used in which subjects controlled the motions of a virtual basketball player. In addition to the basketball task performance (baskets/goals), subjects were required to report camera flashes in the virtual environment (stadium) and to simultaneously detect strobe light flashes in a real research laboratory. These tasks were designed as secondary-monitoring tasks and were intended to assess subject attention allocation to the virtual and real environments as an indicator of telepresence. Each subject was exposed to a single viewpoint condition including either an egocentric view, an exocentric view from behind the player, an exocentric view from the sideline of the court, or a selectable viewpoint. They were also exposed to four virtual sound conditions including task-relevant sounds, task-irrelevant sounds, a combination of sounds and no sound, as well as two visual display fidelity conditions including a low fidelity stadium composed of rendered walls surrounding the basketball court and a high fidelity stadium that displayed a texture of a crowd watching the game. Finally, the subjects experienced two task difficulty conditions including 2-point and 3-point shots. The order of presentation of the sound, fideli.
Keywords: virtual reality, teleoperation, synthetic environment, virtual task performance.
Extends extant research into the use of virtual reality (VR) for task completion as well as the development of a structure for virtual environment (VE) development. Provides a framework for the development of a VE that provides information for manufacturing task completion.
With contributions from a collection of authors consisting of many recognizable experts in the field of virtual and adaptive environments, as well as many up and coming young researchers, this book illustrates the many ways in which psychological science contributes to and benefits from the increased development and application of these nascent systems. Discussing issues from both a user- and technology-based standpoint, the volume examins the use of human perception, cognition, and behavior. The book builds a foundation on the assumption that these systems are first and foremost human-centered technologies, in that their purpose is to complement and extend human capabilities across a wide variety of domains.