Would the rec­tan­gu­lar ref­er­ence frame of a CAVE help to reduce dis­ori­en­ta­tion and improve nav­i­ga­tion per­for­mance in VR? Here, we show that simply pro­vid­ing the rec­tan­gu­lar ref­er­ence frame of a room (as a simple wire­frame cuboid), but not a CAVE improved nav­i­ga­tion­al search performance. 

Despite recent advances in vir­tu­al real­i­ty, loco­mo­tion in a vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment is still restrict­ed because of spa­tial dis­ori­en­ta­tion. Previous research has shown the ben­e­fits of ref­er­ence frames in main­tain­ing spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion. Here, we pro­pose using a visu­al­ly sim­u­lat­ed ref­er­ence frame in vir­tu­al real­i­ty to pro­vide users with a better sense of direc­tion in land­mark-free vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments. Visually over­laid rec­tan­gu­lar frames sim­u­late dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions of frames of ref­er­ence. We inves­ti­gat­ed how two dif­fer­ent types of visu­al­ly sim­u­lat­ed ref­er­ence frames might ben­e­fit in a nav­i­ga­tion­al search task through a mixed-method study. Results showed that the pres­ence of a ref­er­ence frame sig­nif­i­cant­ly affects par­tic­i­pants’ per­for­mance in a nav­i­ga­tion­al search task. Though the ego­cen­tric frame of ref­er­ence (sim­u­lat­ed CAVE) that trans­lates with the observ­er did not sig­nif­i­cant­ly help, an allo­cen­tric frame of ref­er­ence (a sim­u­lat­ed sta­tion­ary room) sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved user per­for­mance both in nav­i­ga­tion­al search time and over­all travel dis­tance. Our study sug­gests that adding a vari­a­tion of the ref­er­ence frame to vir­tu­al real­i­ty appli­ca­tions might be a cost-effec­tive solu­tion to enable more effec­tive loco­mo­tion in vir­tu­al reality.

For more infor­ma­tion and to down­load a demo, see http://navisearch.ispacelab.com/

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