Impact of Different Field-of-Views on Visuospatial Memory and Cognitive Workload in a Complex Virtual Environment

Abstract

The evolution of state-of-the-art visual interfaces incorporating 360° video feeds has paved the way in expanding the human’s capacity to sense complex environments exponentially. As the horizontal field-of-view (FoV) of an adult healthy human being is limited, it is imperative to evaluate the human-perceptual cognitive functions (like visuospatial working memory) as a function of FoVs offered by different visual interfaces. This research’s primary objective is to address this need and to investigate the influence of different FoVs on cognitive performance in a complex virtual environment. In a laboratory-based experiment, 60 healthy subjects were equally and randomly divided into three between-subject conditions: 180° × 2 FoV (interface divided into an upper section projecting a front view of 180° and a lower section projecting a back view of 180°); 360° × 1 FoV (panoramic); and the 360° × 90° FoV (panoramic view in the lower section of the interface and 90° view of the region of interest in the upper section, which could be panned as per the participant’s convenience). Participants were initially asked to place six mines at six different locations of their choice within 5 min. Starting from a different initiation point in the virtual environment, participants were then asked to specify the mines’ approximate location within 5 min. Behavioral and cognitive workload results revealed that participants performed better and perceived lesser workload requirements in the 180° × 2 FoV and the 360° × 90° FoV condition compared to the 360° × 1 FoV condition. We highlight the implications of this research for creating compelling and reliable virtual environments for training personnel.