Exploring Direction Estimation in Virtual Environments

Environmental spatial abilities are key for moving around in large spaces, and direction estimation is a common task for assessing such skills. Two key factors impacting on such skills is the complexity of the environment and pointing angle. We report on an experimental study with 40 participants in virtual environments to examine the effect of pointing angles and environment complexity on egocentric pointing judgments. Findings indicate that pointing accuracy performance with target locations at orthogonal angles is significantly higher than with non-orthogonal angles. We discuss our findings with respect to the Orthogonal Framework.