The Relationship Between Time and Distance Perception in Egocentric and Discrete Virtual Locomotion (Teleportation)

TL;DR

This study investigates how introducing a delay proportional to teleportation distance in virtual environments influences users' perception of distance, finding that delays reduce underestimation and improve accuracy.

Contribution

It demonstrates that incorporating temporal delays in teleportation can significantly improve distance perception accuracy in virtual environments.

Findings

Delay reduces distance underestimation from 27% to 16.8%.

Participants develop strategies to estimate distances despite delays.

Time influences distance perception in virtual teleportation.

Abstract

Traveling distances in the real world inherently involves time, as moving to a desired location is a continuous process. This temporal component plays a role when estimating the distance covered. However, in virtual environments, this relationship is often changed or absent. Common teleportation techniques enable instantaneous transitions, lacking any temporal element that might aid in distance perception. Since distances are found to be commonly underestimated in virtual environments, we investigate the influence of time on this misperception, specifically in target-selection-based teleportation interfaces. Our first experiment explores how introducing a delay proportional to the distance covered by teleportation affects participants' perception of distances, focusing on underestimation, accuracy, and precision. Participants are required to teleport along a predefined path with varying delays. A second experiment is designed to determine whether this effect manifests in a more application-specific scenario. The results indicate a significant reduction in distance underestimation, improving from 27% to 16.8% with a delayed teleportation method. Other sub-scales of distance estimation hardly differ. Despite targeted adaptations of previous study designs, participants have again found strategies supporting them in estimating distances. We conclude that time is a factor affecting distance perception and should be considered alongside other factors identified in the literature.