The effects of virtual character animation on spatial judgments

Inaccurate perception of distances is a known problem within virtual environments. We hypothesize that the inclusion of virtual characters within these environments can improve an observer´s ability to judge distances and achieve accurate spatial understanding. We have conducted an empirical study using a desktop display of a small scale environment to evaluate the validity of this concept. We investigated whether the presence and quantity of virtual human characters, as well as the naturalness of their locomotion animations, could improve egocentric and exocentric distance estimations. Preliminary results suggest that static or properly animated characters could improve exocentric estimations, and properly animated characters could reduce egocentric distance compression errors.