Visual realism in Virtual Reality (VR) increases both immersion and development costs. Consequently, it is important to understand the cost-benefit trade-off of specific aspects of visual realism. Determining the extent of visual realism often leads to decisions on the level of visual complexity of a Virtual Environment (VE). In this paper, we investigate the impact of visual complexity on a user's spatial orientation through a user study. To do so, we created a VE containing parts of a real-world place. Participants were asked to map their location within the VE to the corresponding real-world location. They were provided by a pop-up map of the entire VE, on which they were required to choose one named location out of a predefined set of locations. We manipulated the VE's visual complexity by varying the visual elements used to provide cartographic information, namely a map overlay and 3D blocks as buildings. This results in four scene types: i) landscape contour, ii) landscape contour with 3D buildings, iii) landscape contour overlaid with a map, and iv) landscape contour with both 3D buildings and the map overlay. Each participant performed our location recall task for each scene type. Our findings provide empirical evidence that addition of each of these two visual elements individually improved spatial orientation, while their combination only adds a slight improvement.

Regulations to contain the spread of COVID-19 have affected corporations, institutions, and individuals to a degree that most people have never seen before. Information systems researchers have initiated a discourse on information technology’s role in helping people manage this situation. This study informs and substantiates this discourse based on an analysis of a rich dataset: Starting in March 2020, we collected about 3 million tweets that document people’s use of web-conferencing systems (WCS) like Zoom during the COVID-19 crisis. Applying text-mining techniques to Twitter data and drawing on affordance theory, we derive five affordances of and five constraints to the use of WCS during the crisis. Based on our analysis, our argument is that WCS emerged as a social technology that led to a new virtual togetherness by facilitating access to everyday activities and contacts that were “locked away” because of COVID-19-mitigation efforts. We find that WCS facilitated encounters that could not have taken place otherwise and that WCS use led to a unique blending of various aspects of people’s lives. Using our analysis, we derive implications and directions for future research to address existing constraints and realise the potentials of this period of forced digitalisation.