Investigating the Distance Compression on Virtual Environments by Comparing Visualization Devices

The correct distance perception is important for executing various interactive tasks such as navigation, selection and manipulation. It is known, however, that, in general, there is a significant distance perception compression in virtual environments, mainly when using Head-Mounted Displays -- HMDs. This perceived distance compression may bring various problems to the applications and even hinder the utility of those applications that depends on the correct judgment of distances. The scientific community, so far, have not been able to determine the causes of the distance perception compression in virtual environments. For this reason, it was the objective of this work to investigate, through user experiments, the influence of both the field-of-view -- FoV -- and the distance estimation methods on this perceived compression. For that, we conducted an experimental study with 32 participants, in which we compared the my3D device and a HMD trying to determine the causes of the compressed perception. The results showed that user interacting with my3D reported worst distance estimations, on average, when compared to the results of the same users interacting with a HMD, for both tested estimation methods. The causes of that are believed to be the incorrect stimulus of the peripheral vision of the user, the smaller FoV and the smaller immersion sense, as described by the participants of the experiment.