Scale and Space: Representations in Immersive Virtual Reality
Open Access
- Author:
- Simpson, Mark
- Graduate Program:
- Geography
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- January 21, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Alexander Klippel, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Alexander Klippel, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Roger Michael Downs, Committee Member
Alan M Mac Eachren, Committee Member
Klaus Keller, Outside Member
Cynthia Ann Brewer, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- virtual reality
spatial cognition
visualization
immersive
geography - Abstract:
- Immersive virtual reality (iVR) has promised to revolutionize how we view and interact with data, and recent technological advances have generated renewed interest for geographic visualization and related applications. However, there are numerous challenges in realizing the dream of iVR as a useful medium for understanding our changing world. This dissertation addresses different aspects of these challenges through three papers. The first paper (presented in chapter 2) reviews and synthesizes literature across multiple disciplines to understand what is known and not known regarding visualization with iVR. It finds that there are large gaps in empirical knowledge, and much of what we do know comes from vastly different technological contexts. At the same time, research in spatial cognition points to the theoretical potential for iVR to take advantage of natural human space perception to a greater degree than traditional displays. This is accomplished by generating perceptually realistic representations at different perceived sizes compared to users, or what I term \textit{perceptual scales}. The second paper (presented in chapter 3) explores how physically walking around a perceptually large representation affects memory of that representation through a between-participants experiment. Walking has been found to enhance spatial memory of objects and spaces in both real and virtual environments. However, whether this holds for more abstract visualizations, and whether individual differences play a role, remains largely unknown. In the presented experiment, participants viewed a series of 3D scatterplots by either walking around them, or standing still and rotating them. They then completed a series of memory-based tasks. There was no overall difference between participants who walked and those who rotated, but individual differences influenced performance in different ways in different tasks. The third paper (presented in chapter 4) compares how realistically scaled (iVR) and non-realistically scaled (desktop) representations influence user risk perception regarding a natural hazard. Participants viewed a simulation of hurricane storm surge flooding with either iVR or desktop displays. Risk perception was measured by having participants rate potential damage on a series of hypothetical storm surge maps and by making a pair of evacuation decisions. We found that iVR increases map damage ratings, but that it leads participants to report that they would evacuate (and evacuate others) at higher water levels, indicating a disconnect between their understanding of environmental and bodily danger.