Task Performance in Virtual Environments: Stereoscopic Versus Monoscopic Displays and Head-Coupling.
Abstract
The U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences has an ongoing program of investigation into the requirements for using Virtual Environments (VE) to train dismounted soldiers. As a part of this program, an experiment was conducted investigating the effects of different parameters of VE in the performance of simple, representative tasks. This report provides background information about VE display problems, head-coupling in VE, presence, field dependence, and simulator sickness. The tasks used in the experiment are generic to performance in VEs and would form the basis both of training programs and general soldier tasks. Visual presentation of the tasks was either through a Stereoscopic Head Mounted Display (HMD) or a Monoscopic HMD, and subjects could either move their Field of View (FOV) by moving their head (coupled) or could not move the FOV (uncoupled). The five tasks used were (1) movement through a sequence of rooms and doorways, (2) acquisition of a fixed target, (3) tracking a moving object, (4) manipulation of an object, and (5) distance estimation. In general, performance of all tasks improved over repeated trials. In the distance estimation task the estimations were relatively worse at shorter distances. However, the error was significantly lessened with stereoscopic presentations, and was also significantly improved when coupling was used, although these factors did not interact with one another. Performance in the other tasks was not significantly effected by presentation mode or head-coupling. The distance task errors and the lack of significant differences in performance of the other tasks raise questions on the claimed general gain in task performance through the increased reality of stereoscopic presentations and head-coupling.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA306720
Entities
People
- Jennifer Ehrlich
- Michael J. Singer
- Stephen Cinq-mars
Organizations
- U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences