Contributions of proprioception to navigation in virtual environments

Users immersed in virtual environments (VEs) are prone to disorientation and have difficulty transferring spatial knowledge to the real world. A single experiment investigated the contribution of inadequate proprioception to this problem by providing participants with interfaces to a virtual environment that either did (a walking interface) or did not (a joystick) afford proprioceptive feedback similar to that obtained during real walking. The 2 groups explored a large, complex building using a low-resolution head-mounted display. Later, their navigational abilities within the actual building were compared with those of control groups who either studied a map of the building, walked through the real building, or received no prior training. The walking interface conveyed no benefit on an orientation task performed during training in the VE, but it did benefit participants when they tried to find objects in the real world. Actual or potential applications include simulations of environments that are normally explored on foot but cannot be readily visited, such as infantry battlefields and facilities contaminated with chemical, biological, or radiological materials.