Salient Characteristics of Virtual Trees

Abstract

Recent research on the design of virtual environments has focused on the important perceptual characteristics of man-made “carpentered” environments, rather than on VEs of natural environments. The present research examines memory for characteristics of natural settings consisting of virtual trees. Participants viewed either a symmetrical or asymmetrical virtual tree and then re-created it using custom-designed tree editing software. Memory was more accurate for the symmetrical tree. Across trees, participants were most accurate re-creating gross structural dimensions of a tree such as height and leaf size, and were particularly inaccurate at re-creating the curvature of tree branches. Our conclusion is that the design of virtual environments should focus on accurately representing gross structural properties of trees, rather than on using high levels of detail to accurately portray trunk and branch curvature.

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