A Study On Influences Of Different Virtual Reality Systems On Wayfinding Task Performances

Virtual Reality (VR) Technology has played a significant role in academic study of spatial information processing. Limited by the fidelity of simulation, interactive mode and user's proprioception, spatial information is processed in a different way in virtual environment from in the real world. The designing of Virtual Reality system is therefore worthwhile considering whether it generates negative influences on usability of spatial information and ability of positioning and orientation in virtual environment, and furthermore, on performances of spatial tasks.Wayfinding, as a kind of the spatial information processing behaviors, is quite common and usually inescapable in virtual-based task execution, and has been receiving substantial attention in recent decades. Previous studies defined the wayfinding as a three-step process which were decision making, decision executing and information processing. Focusing more on the details of wayfinding process, the study framework was built by decomposing the wayfinding issue based on two different types of behaviors, one of which was recognizing spatial information and determining target directions and the other is confirming the experienced pathway.The influences of two different types of VR systems on wayfinding task performances were discussed in this study. On the platform of two types of VR systems, which were newly-developed Panorama Manifestation VR system and widely-used Desktop VR system, experimental method was employed to examine differences in wayfinding task performances and the corresponding reasons were found out from the perspective of system design.Two experiments were carried out to verify the hypotheses developed in the study. Experiment I was designed in accordance with wayfinding behavior of recognizing spatial information and determining target directions, in which success rate, task completion time and subjective estimation were compared between two systems to determine their impacts. Experiment II was designed in connection with wayfinding behavior of confirming the experienced pathway to analyze the performance differences reflected in users'task scores and estimation of confidences. Furthermore, influence of the divergence of individual spatial abilities on task performances, which cannot be ignored, were examined and its sensitivity to different VR systems were compared as well.Experimental results and statistical analysis showed that, comparing to Desktop VR system, Panorama Manifestation VR system presented multi-dimensional advantages of performances in all types of wayfinding behaviors and kept a high level of sensitivity to individual spatial abilities.Providing a referable basis for the future researches, the profound significance of this study is to verify the effectiveness and superiority of Panorama Manifestation VR system on virtual-based spatial behavior researches by dint of a specific issue of spatial information processing such as wayfinding.