HCC: Design and Evaluation of Spatially Compelling Virtual Environments

这个跨学科的项目研究人类对空间的认知，以改善虚拟环境，无论是从用户和作者的角度来看。其目标是（1）改善虚拟环境，以便在其中进行更好的学习，以及（2）根据人们在学习空间时的认知需求，开发虚拟环境的创作方法。这个研究项目应该通过利用人类的认知能力来推进虚拟环境的设计和创作。该计划旨在开发一种系统，以增加用户的存在感和对虚拟环境的环境规模的敏感性。它进一步寻求开发运动接口，以帮助从小型物理环境中探索大型虚拟环境。一个目标是采用以人为中心的表示在虚拟环境中的运动，并开发在虚拟环境中的技能获取的方法。 这一研究建议也推进了对人类认知和学习的科学理解。 该研究提出的研究将提供有关环境几何和自我表征在感知，定向和导航中发挥的广泛作用的信息，同时控制在真实的世界中非常难以控制的因素。计划对项目的所有组成部分进行严格的评估。这一建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用的环境中模拟真实世界的事件。它们潜在地允许人们了解一个环境，由于时间、距离、费用和安全的原因，否则将无法获得。 虚拟环境可以在教育、娱乐、医学、建筑和培训方面产生巨大的影响，但由于其昂贵和精致，它们没有得到广泛的应用。本提案中的研究计划应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，该提案建立了一个科学计划，以更好地了解人类在沉浸式虚拟环境中的认知能力，并以一种将告知此类环境的设计过程以及我们对人类如何推理空间的理解的方式来实现。

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.