The Effect of Stereovision on the Experience of VR Models of the External Surroundings and the Interior of a Building

Paper in proceeding, 2005

Virtual reality offers considerable promise with regard to facilitating the building process. A good example is the facilitation of communication between architects and building companies, sellers and buyers or between community planners and the general public. It is often thought that in order to utilise the potential of VR in, for example, the above-mentioned contexts, it is necessary to use fully fledged versions of VR, including stereovision and the possibility of controlling the VR show. However, if a model can also be presented on less advanced equipment and still interpreted in a way that is useful to the viewer it will be possible to distribute the model simply and effectively. This would make it easier to create a more democratic urban planning process compared with if specialised equipment needed to be used and special shows needed to be arranged. In this study we compared the experience of two VR models (a large indoor exhibition hall and an outdoor street in Gothenburg, Sweden) when presented with and without stereovision. When the experience was measured using the Semantic Environmental Scale (the SMB scale, developed by Küller, 1975, 1991), questions on the experience of presence and six other questions on the experience of the models, the results only revealed one indication that stereovision made a difference. This indication was the result for the SMB factor Enclosedness. Suggestions are presented for future research in this area.