Human Sensitivity to Slopes of Slanted Paths
Luyao Hu, Yaorui Zhang, Rui Wang, Zaifeng Gao, Hujun Bao, Wei Hua · 2019
Redirected walking allows users to walk naturally through a large immersive virtual environment while the physical space is limited. Previous studies have analyzed human sensitivity to redirected walking in a horizontal direction, but users also need to walk on slopes to change their height. In this work, we expand the vertical movement space by positioning users on virtual paths with slopes that are different from those of real paths. We conduct psychological experiments to explore human sensitivity to slope gains that describe the discrepancies between the slopes of paths in virtual and real environments. The investigation shows that humans can walk on virtual slopes that are higher or lower than the real position without detecting the slopes and establishes corresponding detection thresholds.