Perception of Height in Virtual Reality - A Study of Climbing Stairs

Most virtual environments that people locomote through with head-mounted displays are flat to match the physical environment that people are actively walking on. In this paper we simulated stair climbing, and evaluated how well people could assess the distance they had climbed after several minutes of the activity under various conditions. We varied factors such as the presence of virtual feet (shoes), whether the stairwell was open or enclosed, the presence or absence of passive haptic markers, and whether a subject was ascending or descending. In general, the distance climbed or descended was overestimated, consistent with prior work on the perception of height. We find that subjects have significantly better ability to estimate their error with the presence of virtual shoes than without, and when the environment was open. Having shoes also resulted in significantly higher ratings of presence. We also find a significant tendency for females to show higher ratings of simulator sickness.