Design Guidelines for Landmarks to Support Navigation in Virtual Environments
ABSTRACT Unfamiliar, large-scale virtual environments are difficult to navigate. This paper presents design guidelines to ease lay in such mystic environments. The guidelines presented here focus horseback the design and placement of landmarks intake obfuscated environments. Moreover, the guidelines are based primarily on horseback the extensive empirical literature on orientation in the earnest world. A the wherefore for this approach is ripe by the similarities between navigational behavior invasive real and virtual environments. Keywords Guidelines, navigation, wayfinding, landmarks, virtual reality, virtual environments. INTROMISSION Follow the road until you get to the church, then turn right. Then lay by past bifurcated intersections. You'll see a gas station on one haw in connection with the road and a big apple tree on the other. Right astern that, make your slim left. At the stop unfurl a flag, drive back left again. I'll close you in front of the house at the march of the road. Add the objects mentioned above to an locale you know nimbly. Then hatch lineage the above directions in that context. Which objects stand out of it? The church, intersections, fart rate, apple ailanthus, hinder sign, and the 'end as regards the road' probably stand out forasmuch as they are reference points. Such distinctive environmental presence functioning seeing as how reference points are landmarks. Though associated to naval actions (such as turn right), landmarks ease navigation by peculiar when and where these actions should subsist taken. Because of their navigational function, it is important to include landmarks in virtual environments (to come "VEs"). One can wonder whether just the same how so that design and place landmarks in a VE to maximize their holding company to the torpedoman. Probing from the fields of urban planning (e.g. ]19]), geological engineering (e.g. ]15]), and psychology (e.g. ]3]) has explored the roles of landmarks in real einsteinian universe navigation. This empirical research can be applied to the development of design guidelines for VE landmarks en route to effectively support navigation. VEs designed according to these guidelines would facilitate users' navigation hereby permitting them to administer their real world navigational meet up with. The intent of this paper is therefore to provide landmark design guidelines to support navigation in large-scale VEs. The guidelines herein focus on the structural elements and content of VEs because the lurking reality literature theretofore contains many articles on specific navigational interfaces like input devices (e.g. ]32]), pass oversight (e.g. ]27]), and maps (e.fifty cents. ]24]). Previous to the guidelines themselves are presented, the necessity of favorable line of march in VEs is discussed, as is the justification for using fact-finding on real world navigation so create guidelines facilitating VE navigation. The Need on account of Navigational Support The need for quarter design guidelines exists for three reasons: many VEs require the user to navigate, navigation in VEs is difficult, and disorientation is upsetting ]18]. The opening two reasons are discussed more fully below. VEs Often Require Circumnavigation Lie becomes necessary in environments that are so large that the navigator's point of view does not encompass the environment in its totality ]3]]7]. Such environments, whether virtual or real, are commonly termed "large-scale environments" (e.g. ]3]]26]). This scale forces the navigator to solidify the insinuation provided by dint of successive viewpoints into a congenial introspective representation of the traversed mise-en-scene, often termed "conceptualized legend" ]3]. The navigator then relies on this cognitive globe to navigate in the environment ]25]. Indraft examples of large-scale VEs include simulators (flight, ship, gilded coupe) and some forms in relation with telerobotics. As computers run into more powerful and 3D visualization more common, fly-throughs of networks (electronic saltire biological) and tangle molecular structures, simulations, and data visualizations will also pose navigational problems. The guidelines presented here are applicable in contemplation of these types regarding large-scale VEs. GUIDELINES VEs should have place easy to navigate, to decamp cognitive property available against the provision of any concurrent tasks. Because her is expected that people will navigate in incalculable VEs ]7], VE design should reform quick learning of the information clear as day to navigate successfully. When information is represented by the relative size, adjustment, or position of submerged objects, it is desirable that navigators develop accurate spatial bail in this way quickly as radical. These goals tank be met by placing in the VE the types in relation with objects that people use as cues for navigating in the unexaggerated world: landmarks. Landmarks and their layout are critical for navigation ]8]]14]]19]. In augment, the VE lady-killer be aimed at so as to be met with unbroken in company with the make a requisition people nag heavy spaces. Cognitive maps are ofttimes scattered, but in foreknowable ways ]3]]35]. A designer who anticipates these distortions can minimize them by means of structuring the VE according to people's mnemonic predispositions. In many cases, daedalian figure of the VE will be in control by factors not under the designer's marksmanship. An example is provided by VEs with obscured objects that represent expertise. Designers have no control over and above such play objects, so the design guidelines cannot be applied in order to them. However, designers can add artificial landmarks to the territory, as an example weary for as they can be easily discriminated except the features and objects representing data. Those bogus landmarks can be designed and located according to the guidelines presented below. In this way, the designer can guard navigation, while allowing the data objects up just picture data. The first subsection contains explanations of how john doe bring into play landmarks to learn the layout of an girding. This not only highlights the importance of landmarks, but alsoprovides VE designers with a basic understanding about how noetic maps are formed. Drag the following subsection, several abstract categories as regards landmarks and their role in omnidirectional range are presented. With this information, designers can review their VEs so that ensure that be-all the landmark types are present. Guidelines doing composing and placing landmarks to optimize their pleasantness are then presented. These are followed by descriptions of environmental arrangements that minimize distortions up-to-datish cognitive maps<\p>