In this work, we were interested in using smartphone touchscreen keyboard for text typing in virtual environments (VEs) with head-mounted display. We carried out an experiment comparing the smartphone to the ordinary devices: gamepad and HTC Vive Controllers. We represented the touchscreen keyboard in the VE with a virtual interface and the fingertips with tracked green circles. A confirm-on-release paradigm was employed for text typing. Results showed that the smartphone did not fully outperformed the other devices. However, unlike the other devices, smartphones users tended to correct progressively their error while typing thanks to their familiarity with the device.

We propose an approach for flexibly scalable workspace that changes viewer's perceived size of the workspace by simulating a virtually movable wall on the real wall. We conducted an experiment comparing viewers depth estimates between extended workspace virtually and physically. Besides, we investigated walls motion effects; discrete wall motion or continuous wall motion. Distances were estimated verbally and using perceptual matching method. Verbal depth estimates were equivalent in the virtual extended workspace and the physical one, with a high accuracy (estimation errors were less than 5%). However, perceptual matching estimates were signicantly different between virtual and physical scaling. Overall, they were slightly overestimated. No difference of the motion effect was found. Our results clearly suggest the potential of the workspace scaling by just giving such visual impression of extended workspace using perspective projection technique.

Stereo and head tracking are considered as distance perception cues in virtual environments. Several studies have investigated their influence on several tasks. Results were different among studies. In this paper, we conducted a complete experiment investigating the influence of the stereo and the head tracking in the specific context of virtual visits of houses during architectural project review with clients. We manipulated the stereo and the head tracking in four conditions and we examined the effects of the two factors on distance estimations (walls size, habitability, etc.), task difficulty, presence and simulator sickness. Results revealed a significant effect of the stereo on the judgement of the habitability, the dimensions of the rooms and task difficulty. However, for both features, no significant effects were found on the presence and simulator sickness.

In architectural project review, the perception of the near surrounding ground is important for the evaluation of the virtual environment (VE). This near surrounding ground is missing when using wall screens. To address this problem we suggest increasing the Vertical Field of View (VFoV). One solution is the use of the rendering approach such as non-planar projection. However, simply increasing the FoV of the rendering leads to much distortion in the VE which is not suitable for architectural project review. We propose a new hybrid projection combining a perspective projection in the center of the screen and a cylindrical-like projection on the top and bottom boarders. By this, we increase VFoV without incurring large deformations to preserve the perception of distances and to allow seeing the surrounding ground. We also report the results of an experiment we conducted to evaluate distance perception with our projection.

Distances are perceived as being more compressed in immersive virtual environments (IVEs) than in real environments. The goal of this study is to identify the most important factors that influence decision making and accuracy of distance perception in the context of architectural project reviews. Technical factors such as field of view, display devices and motion parallax were widely studied. In this paper, we have investigated other individual and contextual factors. We conducted a between-subject experiment using an immersive large screen display to examine the influence of the three factors: 1) the cognitive profile of the user (visual, auditory and kinesthetic - VAK), 2) the furnishing of the house, and 3) the locomotion speed, on distance perception. Results reveal that participants with visual profile were more accurate in distance estimation. Further, furnished houses were more suitable for virtual visits. The locomotion speed also seems to influence virtual visits which were better with a slow locomotion speed. Based on the results of our study, we finally present guidelines for setting up architectural project review tools which employ similar setup.