Influence of Surroundings Density on Estimations of Geometrical Characteristics in the Virtual Route

Abstract

Using virtual routes that were projected in CAVE having 5 screens, we examined memory of distances and orientations between a start point and a goal point. Subjects estimated only distances on linear routes, and both distances and orientations on curved routes. The moving distance, speed and density of surrounding objects affected the distance estimations and the only moving distance affected the orientation estimations. Especially, the interaction of distance estimation between moving distance and density of surrounding objects was characteristic result that there were overestimations in short distance with high object density. In addition, we examined the effect of having knowledge for a goal point from the beginnings of the trials, and showed that the knowledge affected the effect of density. We inferred two memory strategies by using static information and by using dynamic information to account for these data.