The paper discusses the use of precedents from architecture, urban design and film to propose guidelines for the improvement of navigation and wayfinding in virtual environments.
Virtual EnvironmentsThe predominant use, so far, of virtual reality technology in relation to architecture, has been as a means of visually simulating architectural designs. In this respect, virtual reality may be considered as the ultimate medium for producing representations of architectural designs, as it is the only technology capable of simulating the experience of being and moving within a designed environment, prior to its construction. This paper, however, is concerned with how architectural design may contribute to the design of virtual environments themselves. More specifically, it refers to the problem of designing virtual environments from the point of view of enhancing the users' spatial awareness and, consequently, aiding the task of navigation and wayfinding within virtual environments. The need for addressing this issue is evident in the number of virtual environments which are not very efficient in orientating their operators (and are usually aesthetically displeasing as well).This study has been carried out in relation to a particular class of virtual environment. World Design Inc., in a report on the design of virtual environments (1993, p.12), classified virtual environments in terms of the represented level of realism. They defined:• Hyper-realities, which aim at representing the material world and reflecting its complexity and in which the creative design element is often limited to modeling interaction with the user.• Selective realities, which are simplified representations of the material world and where some aspects of the environment are distorted or transformed and others are accurately represented.• Abstractions, where the virtual environment represents a very complex material world information or information that has no physical representation. In this case, the designer must conceive an effective abstraction of the complex information (which implies a transformation of meaning of what is being represented) and make this understood and responsive for the operator.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.