Perceived egocentric distances in real, image-based, and traditional virtual environments

In virtual environments, perceived egocentric distances are consistently underestimated when compared to the same distance judgments in the real world. The research pre-sented in this paper explores two possible causes for the compressed distance perception in virtual environments: (1) real-time computer graphics rendering, and (2) immer-sive display technology. Our results show there is a sig-nificant difference in distance judgments between real and virtual environments. However, the differences between dis-tance judgments in virtual photographic panorama environ-ments and traditionally rendered virtual environments are small, suggesting that the display device is affecting dis-tance judgments in virtual environments. 1