Am I Moving Along A Curve?
Study overview: (Left)Experiment Setup. Our experiment was conducted with a bike simulator. The simulator comprises of an electric bike with a head mounted display, a fan, and a speedometer. (Right) Users had to make their decision after each experimental trial.
Abstract: There are many techniques for locomotion and navigation that can support the exploration of large virtual environments in a limited physical area. Previous studies focused on measuring curvature gains and bending gains applied to the walking direction in the real world. However, the effects of different moving techniques and their relationship with shapes and patterns of virtually moving paths have not been studied extensively before. In this study, we present our experimental results on how users perceive two different traveling-in-place techniques with different bending gains of moving paths using a hybrid electric bike simulator. Moreover, the impact of different factors including road textures, road widths, and road curve directions and their relationships with the techniques are investigated. Generally, users could travel along a curve without noticing with a point of subjective equality (PSE) at bending angle β = 1.42 degree, and a just-noticeable difference (JND) of 0.75 degree for a movement at around 20 km/h during 5 seconds. In addition, movement technique, curve direction, and future travel path significantly affected how they perceived the curvature of their travel path.
Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Thanh Dat Ngoc Tran and Tam Duy Nguyen for supporting the development of the bicycle system and the virtual environment. In addition, we would also like to thank Trung-Hieu Hoang and Mai-Khiem Tran for assisting in conducting users study. The authors would also like to thank our participants for taking part in the experiment. Finally, the authors also would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the coordinator for their constructive comments and useful recommendations.
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