Accepted for publication by the International Journal of Human-Computer
Interaction, 10/95
Navigating Large Virtual Spaces
Rudolph P. Darken
Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, D.C. 20375
+1-202-767-2236
darken@enews.nrl.navy.mil
John L. Sibert
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, D.C. 20052
sibert@seas.gwu.edu
ABSTRACT
As important as navigation is to human performance in virtual worlds, it
is an often overlooked problem in the design process. This paper reports
an experiment intended to show that real-world wayfinding and environmental
design principles are effective in designing virtual worlds that support
skilled wayfinding behavior. The study measures subject performance on a
complex searching task in a number of virtual worlds with differing environmental
cues. The worlds are augmented with either a radial grid, a map, or both
a grid and a map. The control condition provided no additional navigational
cues. The results showed that navigational performance was superior under
both map treatments as compared to the control and grid conditions. The
grid was, however, shown to provide superior directional information as
compared to the other conditions. The control condition provided the worst
performance, with subjects often becoming disoriented and experiencing extreme
difficulty completing the tasks.
CONTENTS
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Last Change: March 20, 1996
darken@enews.nrl.navy.mil