Impact of visual and experiential realism on distance perception in VR using a custom video see-through system

Immersive virtual reality (VR) technology has the potential to play an important role in the conceptual design process in architecture, if we can ensure that sketch-like structures are able to afford an accurate egocentric appreciation of the scale of the interior space of a preliminary building model. Historically, it has been found that people tend to perceive egocentric distances in head-mounted display (HMD) based virtual environments as being shorter than equivalent distances in the real world. Previous research has shown that in such cases, reducing the quality of the computer graphics does not make the situation significantly worse. However, other research has found that breaking the illusion of reality in a compellingly photorealistic VR experience can have a significant negative impact on distance perception accuracy.