Thinking Outside the Lab: VR Size & Depth Perception in the Wild

TL;DR

This study conducted a large-scale, remote VR perception experiment to analyze size and distance perception in real-world settings, revealing nonlinear distance compression and minimal effect of eye-height variation.

Contribution

It introduces a gamified, remote protocol for VR perception studies, enabling diverse, large-scale data collection outside laboratory constraints.

Findings

Distance perception shows nonlinear compression in VR.

Size matching results are inconclusive.

Eye-height variation has no significant effect.

Abstract

Size and distance perception in Virtual Reality (VR) have been widely studied, albeit in a controlled laboratory setting with a small number of participants. We describe a fully remote perceptual study with a gamified protocol to encourage participant engagement, which allowed us to quickly collect high-quality data from a large, diverse participant pool (N=60). Our study aims to understand medium-field size and egocentric distance perception in real-world usage of consumer VR devices. We utilized two perceptual matching tasks -- distance bisection and size matching -- at the same target distances of 1--9 metres. While the bisection protocol indicated a near-universal trend of nonlinear distance compression, the size matching estimates were more equivocal. Varying eye-height from the floor plane showed no significant effect on the judgements. We also discuss the pros and cons of a fully remote perceptual study in VR, the impact of hardware variation, and measures needed to ensure high-quality data.