Immersion and Battlefield Visualization: Frame of Reference Effects on Navigation Tasks and Cognitive Tunneling
Abstract
We compared two types of electronic displays of battlefield information in order to determine how display frame of reference affects a military commander's situation awareness and diagnostic capabilities in a dynamic combat scenario. US Military Academy officers viewed an unfolding ground battle scenario, presented as a sequence of computer-based slides, in one of two display view conditions. The first view condition was a 3-D exocentric (tethered) frame of reference (FOR) looking down at the terrain from 3000 meters above and 1200-1500 meters behind the commander's location, such that the commander's vehicle was always visible at approximately the same location on the screen (centered in the bottom third of the screen) for every scene. The second view condition was a combination display which consisted of an 3-D immersed egocentric view of the terrain from a viewpoint just above the command vehicle s location on the ground and a small 2-D contour map of the entire battle area embedded in the top center of the screen. Within each scene the officers were asked to verbally report any new enemy units or changes to existing units as well as to respond to a series of diagnostic questions about the particular scene and give confidence ratings of their selected answers. Results showed that the tethered display produced worse performance on distance judgment tasks than the immersed display. Performance was equivalent across display conditions on questions involving direction judgments. The immersed display condition produced worse global hazard awareness than the tethered display condition, however confidence ratings for the global awareness tasks did not differ between display conditions. Additionally, immersed display condition subjects take longer to respond to, and show poorer performance on, questions requiring them to pan the environment than subjects in the tethered condition (which did not have a panning option).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA436774
Entities
People
- Christopher Dow Wickens
- James Merlo
- Lisa C. Thomas
Organizations
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign