Interaction mapping affects spatial memory and the sense of presence when navigating in a virtual environment

By their very nature, virtual reality worlds are spatial. Hence, one of the key requirements for virtual reality applications is the possibility to navigate within the virtual world. Previous studies have shown that the characteristics of the device used for navigation, both in terms of the physical properties, and the interaction logic, has effects on the user's experience. The question we address is how does different navigation modes with the same physical interface affect the user's experience. We selected two modes which differed in the way the user's actions were mapped to movements in the virtual environment. To quantify the difference between the two interaction mappings, spatial memory and the subjective sense of presence were compared. The results of our study showed that interaction mapping affects both, spatial memory and presence. Hence, not only the specific physical device but also the way it is used is important for the user's experience and recollection of it. Additionally, we found a correlation between spatial memory and subjective sense of presence, which indicates that the subjective sense of presence can be estimated from the performance in a spatial memory task.