Egocentric Distance Perception: A Comparative Study Investigating Differences Between Real and Virtual Environments.

Virtual reality systems are a popular tool in behavioral sciences. The participants' behavior is, however, a response to cognitively processed stimuli. Consequently, researchers must ensure that virtually perceived stimuli resemble those present in the real world to ensure the ecological validity of collected findings.

Pedestrians Accept Shorter Distances to Light Vehicles Than Dark Ones When Crossing the Street.

Does the brightness of an approaching vehicle affect a pedestrian's crossing decision? Thirty participants indicated their street-crossing intentions when facing approaching light or dark vehicles. The experiment was conducted in a real daylight environment and, additionally, in a corresponding virtual one. A real road with actual cars provides high face validity, while a virtual environment ensures the scenario's precise reproducibility and repeatability for each participant.

A Simple Video-Based Technique for Measuring Latency in Virtual Reality or Teleoperation.

Designers of virtual reality (VR) systems are aware of the need to minimize delays between the user's tracked physical actions and the consequent displayed actions in the virtual environment. Such delays, also referred to as end-to-end latency, are known to degrade user performance and even cause simulator sickness. Though a wide variety of hardware and software design strategies have been used to reduce delays, techniques for measuring and minimizing latency continue to be needed since transmission and switching delays are likely to continue to introduce new sources of latency, especially in wireless mobile environments.

Road crossing decisions in real and virtual environments: A comparative study on simulator validity.

Virtual reality (VR) is a valuable tool for the assessment of human perception and behavior in a risk-free environment. Investigators should, however, ensure that the used virtual environment is validated in accordance with the experiment's intended research question since behavior in virtual environments has been shown to differ to behavior in real environments. This article presents the street crossing decisions of 30 participants who were facing an approaching vehicle and had to decide at what moment it was no longer safe to cross, applying the step-back method.

Effects of simulated mild vision loss on gaze, driving and interaction behaviors in pedestrian crossing situations.

Purpose: Interaction is the process of behavior adaption between two or more participants primarily based on what they visually perceive. It is an important aspect of traffic participation and supports a safe and efficient flow of traffic. However, prior driving simulator studies investigating the effects of vision impairment have typically used pre-programmed pedestrians that did not interact with the human driver.