Distance Perception in Virtual Reality: A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Head-Mounted Display Characteristics

Abstract

Distances are commonly underperceived in virtual reality (VR), and this finding has been documented repeatedly over more than two decades of research. Yet, there is evidence that perceived distance is more accurate in modern compared to older head-mounted displays (HMDs). This meta-analysis, based on 137 data points from 61 publications, describes egocentric distance perception across 20 HMDs and examines the relationship between perceived distance and technical HMD characteristics. Judged distance was positively associated with HMD field of view (FOV), positively associated with HMD resolution, and negatively associated with HMD weight. The effects of FOV and resolution were more pronounced among heavier HMDs. These findings suggest that future improvements in these technical characteristics may be central to resolving the problem of distance underperception in VR.

Visual processing of actions directed towards three-dimensional objects in immersive virtual reality may involve holistic processing of object shape

“…One potential explanation for a mechanistic shift to more ventral stream visuomotor control is the artificial presentations of distance cues used to perceive depth in an HMD-VR environment (Ganel and Goodale, 2003;Renner et al, 2013;Kelly, 2022;Kelly et al, 2022;refer to Harris et al, 2019 for a more detialed discussion). Briefly, depth perception occurs from incorporating both monocular cues (e.g., texture, shadows) and binocular cues (e.g., disparity, convergence).…”

Perceiving distance in virtual reality: theoretical insights from contemporary technologies

“…Renner et al [ 3 ] summarizes average egocentric distance estimation as 74% of the modelled distance, based on 78 articles published between 1993 and 2012. Kelly [ 5 ] found that the newest HMDs, on average, show distance estimation at about 82% of actual distance, which is improved, but still underestimated relative to the real world. Many factors have been examined as explanations for the underperception of scale including but not limited to: FOV and weight of HMDs [ 29 – 32 ], geometric distortions in displays [ 8 , 33 – 37 ], graphics quality or realism [ 28 , 38 – 40 ], pictorial or ground-surface cues [ 41 – 45 ], and response measures [ 38 , 46 , 47 ].…”

“…In the next two sections, we consider how changing HMD technology (which is associated with improved distance perception) could influence some of the information for absolute scale discussed in the earlier sections. First, the weight of the HMD has been directly [ 29 , 31 ] and indirectly [ 5 ] shown to affect distance perception. It is possible that wearing an HMD that increases weight on the head may affect how the angle of declination is computed or used.…”

“…Yet the use of VEs for this purpose relies on the assumption that the perceptual information obtained in them is similar to what it would be in the real world, allowing for generalization of findings from one environment to another. A substantial body of work demonstrates that for the perception of absolute distance in VEs, though, there is a measurable and often large mismatch between perception in a VE and perception in the real world [3][4][5]. The scale (size and distance) of VEs is underestimated relative to real-world spaces-in some studies, distances have been underperceived by as much as 50%.…”

“…This paper examines distance perception in VEs, with particular attention paid to results obtained with modern virtual reality equipment where we see improvement in the similarity of perception in VEs and the real world [ 5 ]. The goal is to describe the state of knowledge on distance perception in VEs with respect to which visual cues and other factors are missing, reduced, or altered by current technology, and then to explain why these cues and factors may affect distance perception.…”