Effects of Device Environment and Information Layout on Spatial Memory and Performance in VR Selection Tasks

Virtual Reality systems are increasingly proposed as a platform for everyday interactive software. Many applications are dependent on actions such as navigation and selection, but it is not clear how well immersive environments support these basic activities. Previous studies have suggested advantages for spatial learning in VR, so we carried out a study that investigated two aspects of immersion on spatial memory and selection: the degree to which the user is immersed in the data, and whether the system uses immersive input and output. The study showed that more-immersive conditions had substantially worse selection performance, and did not improve spatial learning. However, most participants believed that the immersive conditions were better for learning object locations, and most people preferred the immersive layout and the HMD. Our study suggests that designers should be cautious about assuming that everyday software applications will benefit from being deployed in an immersive VR environment.