Learning of Spatial Properties of a Large-Scale Virtual City With an Interactive Map

Abstract

To become acquainted with large-scale environments such as cities people combine direct experience and indirect sources such as maps. To ascertain which type of spatial knowledge is acquired by which source is difficult to evaluate. Using virtual reality enables the possibility to investigate whether knowledge is learned by direct experience or the use of a map differentially. Therefore, we designed a large virtual city, comprised of over 200 houses, and evaluated spatial knowledge acquisition after city exploration with an interactive map following one and three 30-min exploration sessions. We tested subjects’ knowledge of the orientation of houses facing directions toward cardinal north, of orientations of houses facing directions relative to each other and pointing from one house to another. Our results revealed that increased familiarity after extended exploration with the map improved task accuracy. Further, it revealed task differences, caused mainly by a better accuracy in the relative orientation task than the pointing task. Time for cognitive reasoning improved overall task accuracy. Learning with our VR city map revealed an absence of distance effect, an alignment effect of tested house orientation toward map north and an angular difference effect between tested stimuli. Self-reported knowledge of cardinal directions learned in the real environment was positively correlated with task accuracy testing houses orientations toward cardinal north. Overall, our results suggest that participants learned spatial information that is directly available in the interactive map, while a spatial task that needed integration of learned knowledge stayed at lower accuracy levels.

Embodied Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in Immersive Virtual Reality: Comparison to Map Exploration

“…The experiment reported here was performed in close analogy to a previous study using an interactive map for the spatial exploration of Seahaven (König et al, 2019). We briefly report the full experiment procedure of the present study below.…”

“…In the present paper, we use VR technology for a direct comparison of spatial knowledge acquisition by direct experience and cartographic material. Following this line of thought, we built a large-scale immersive virtual city (Clay, König, & König, 2019) and created an interactive map thereof (König et al, 2019). Seahaven is a relatively large and complex virtual environment to enable an analogy to real-world cities.…”

“…With the help of an HTC Vive headset, participants were immersed in the VR, which allowed a direct experience of the environment from a pedestrian perspective during the free exploration. While participants explored the city, we recorded their viewing behavior (Clay et al, 2019). After each exploration, we evaluated participants acquired spatial knowledge investigating three tasks: knowledge of the orientation of houses facing directions towards cardinal north, the orientation of houses facing directions in relation to a prime house's facing direction, and straight-line pointing from one house to another.…”

“…In our project, we investigated the spatial exploration of the virtual environment with different sources. Here, we report the results after direct experience in the city as described above and compare these with results after exploration with an interactive city map (König et al, 2019).…”

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Investigating spatial navigation in virtual environments enables to study spatial learning with different sources of information. Therefore, we designed a large virtual city and investigated spatial knowledge acquisition after direct experience in the virtual environment and compared this with results after exploration with an interactive map (König et al, 2019). Our results suggest that survey knowledge measured in a straight line pointing task between houses resulted in better accuracy after direct experience in VR than tasks directly based on cardinal directions and relative orientations.

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