The effect of physical and virtual rotations of a 3D object on spatial perception

We question whether a virtual reality (VR) environment produces the same spatial perception as natural world. In this study, as a first attempt to answer the above question, we examined the perceived rotation of an object (a building) in both virtual and natural environments on spatial ability of 30 young males, while navigating in a virtual environment. We calculated the number of errors they made in finding a destination in a virtual reality navigational environment. The subjects performed three sets of 4 trials of finding a target room in a virtual building with no landmarks. At the beginning of each trial the target room was shown to the subject by rotation of the building from outside perspective. The building rotation was achieved in three conditions: 1) in virtual environment, 2) in real environment by rotating an identical but scaled physical building, and 3) by walking around the physical model. Each subject performed 4 trials of virtual navigation under each of the above conditions. In each trial, the traversed distance and the visited rooms were recorded by the program. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to find any statistical difference between the particpants´ errors in three conditions. Overall, no statistically significant differences were found between the error scores in any of the three conditions. The results and their implications are discussed.