What is a Virtual Environment?

Virtual environments are computer-controlled sensory experiences that approximate experience with an actual environment. They are interactive, three-dimensional, and evolve in real-time. Virtual environments have attracted a great deal of attention because of the possibility that training and/or exploration of a virtual environment might serve as a replacement for training and exploration in the actual environment. This could be useful in training or mission preparation situations where experience in the actual environment would be expensive, possibly dangerous, and sometimes impossible.


The assumption behind the enthusiasm for virtual environment training is that information and skills acquired in the virtual environment will transfer to the real environment. To their chagrin, educators and psychologists are only too familiar with situations in which it is logical to believe that transfer should occur but it does not. This project is designed to conduct a series of studies intended to determine the sorts of situations under which transfer of training will or will not occur.


This project deals with the acquisition of information about the "large space" layout of an environment, such as the corridors of a building or passageways of a ship. This is an important practical topic because there are situations in which procedures to be used in a real environment could be acquired by training in a virtual environment. For instance, firefighters responsible for the protection of a building could train in a virtual surrogate for that building. We are not exploring the question of whether virtual environment training works or does not work, because clearly the answer to that question is "It works sometimes, to varying degrees." What we wish to understand are the psychological principles that determine how a person deals with a virtual environment. An understanding of these principles should assist us in designing better virtual environment training programs.

Proceed to theories

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