HCC: Design and Evaluation of Spatially Compelling Virtual Environments

这个跨学科的项目从用户和作者的角度研究人类对空间的认知，以改善虚拟环境。其目的是(1)改善虚拟环境，以便在其中进行更好的学习，以及(2)开发虚拟环境的创作方法，以了解人们在学习空间时的认知需求。这项研究项目应该通过利用人类的认知能力来促进虚拟环境的设计和创作。这些计划寻求开发一种系统，以增加用户对虚拟环境的环境规模的临场感和敏感度。它还寻求开发移动界面，以帮助从小型物理环境中探索大型虚拟环境。一个目标是在虚拟环境中使用以人为中心的运动表征，并开发在虚拟环境中获得技能的方法。这一研究建议也促进了对人类认知和学习的科学理解。这项研究提出的研究将有助于了解环境几何学和自我表征在感知、定向和导航中发挥的广泛作用，同时控制在现实世界中极难控制的因素，如果不是不可能的话。该项目的所有组成部分都计划了一个严格的评估计划。这一提议的重要性在于，虚拟环境为人们提供了体验远离实际物理环境的地方和情况的机会。虚拟环境允许在可控和可重复使用的环境中模拟真实世界的事件。它们可能会让人们了解一个由于时间、距离、费用和安全的原因而无法获得的环境。虚拟环境可能会对教育、娱乐、医疗、建筑和培训产生巨大影响，但由于它们的成本和微妙程度，它们没有得到广泛使用。这项建议中的研究计划应该显著提高虚拟环境中的学习质量，减少创作虚拟环境的时间和成本，并克服其广泛使用的可能障碍。此外，这项提议建立了一个科学计划，以更好地理解人类在沉浸式虚拟环境中的认知能力，并以一种将为此类环境的设计过程以及我们对人类如何思考空间的理解提供信息的方式做到这一点。

This interdisciplinary project investigates human cognition of spaces to improve virtual environments, both from a user and an author's perspective. The objectives are to (1) improve virtual environments so that better learning can occur in them, and (2) develop authoring methods for virtual environments informed by the cognitive demands that people have when learning spaces. This research project should advance the design and authoring of virtual environments by leveraging human cognitive capabilities. The programs seeks to develop a system to increase the user's sense of presence and sensitivity to the environmental scale of virtual environments. It further seeks to develop locomotion interfaces to assist exploring large virtual environments from within small physical ones. A goal is to employ human-centered representations for locomotion in virtual environments and to develop methods for skill acquisition in virtual environments. This research proposal advances the scientific understanding of human cognition and learning as well. The research proposes studies that will be informative about the broad role that environmental geometry and self-representation play in perception, orientation, and navigation, while controlling factors that are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to control in the real world. A rigorous evaluation program for all components of the project is planned.The importance of this proposal is that virtual environments provide people with opportunities to experience places and situations remote from their actual physical surroundings. Virtual environments allow the simulation of real-world events in a controllable and re-usable environment. They potentially allow people to learn about an environment which, for reasons of time, distance, expense, and safety, would not otherwise be available. Virtual environments could have a huge impact in education, entertainment, medicine, architecture, and training, but they are not widely used because of their expense and delicacy. The research program in this proposal should significantly improve the quality of learning in virtual environments, to reduce the time and cost of authoring virtual environments, and to overcome likely impediments to their widespread use. Moreover, this proposal builds a scientific program to develop a better understanding of the cognitive capabilities of humans in immersive virtual environments, and does so in a way that will inform the design process for such environments and our understanding of how humans reason about space.