Acquisition of Directional Knowledge in Virtual Environments Created by Panoramic Videos

Candidate: Arefe Dalvandi
Type: Master of Science (MSc), School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Date: December 2, 2010
Senior Supervisor: Tom Calvert
Thesis: Download Thesis Document

Abstract

This thesis documents the creation and analysis of virtual environments generated using panoramic video. The proposed virtual environments offer greater visual realism, but are expensive and time consuming to produce. Consequently, experiments were needed to assess how efficiently they support directional tasks or sense of presence. In this study, participants’ ability to locate specific places in the environment and their subjective sense of presence were compared across three conditions: panoramic video, regular video and slide show. Participants reported a stronger sense of presence in the panoramic video condition, although none of the techniques demonstrated a greater efficiency in providing directional knowledge. When the simpler pointing tasks are isolated, participants performed significantly better in the regular video condition. Thus, it does not appear that the costs of creating panoramic video are warranted, especially for those applications involving only the sequential learning of specific landmark locations.