A Study on Evacuation Behavior in Physical and Virtual Reality Experiments

Comparing results obtained in Virtual Reality to those obtained in physical experiments is key for validation of Virtual Reality as a research method in the field of Human Behavior in Fire. A series of experiments based on similar evacuation scenarios in a high-rise building with evacuation elevators was conducted. The experiments consisted of a physical experiment in a building, and two Virtual Reality experiments in a virtual representation of the same building: one using a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE), and one using a head-mounted display (HMD). The data obtained in the HMD experiment is compared to data obtained in the CAVE and physical experiment. The three datasets were compared in terms of pre-evacuation time, noticing escape routes, walking paths, exit choice, waiting times for the elevators and eye-tracking data related to emergency signage. The HMD experiment was able to reproduce the data obtained in the physical experiment in terms of pre-evacuation time and exit choice, but there were large differences with the results from the CAVE experiment. Possible factors affecting the data produced using Virtual Reality are identified, such as spatial orientation and movement in the virtual environment