The Influence of Shading, Display Size and Individual Differences on Navigation Performance in Virtual Reality in an Applied Industry Setting

Despite the increasing use of virtual reality within industry and academia, there is a lack of applied usability evaluations within the field. This is problematic for individuals desiring design principles or best practices for incorporating VR into their businesses. The research presented here is a use case study of a virtual reality system used at the Boeing Company for a number of visualization tasks. Twenty eight Boeing employees performed a series of navigation and wayfinding tasks across two shading conditions (flat/smooth) and two display conditions (desktop/immersive). Performance was measured based on speed and accuracy. Individual difference factors were used as covariates. Results showed that women and those with high spatial orientation ability performed faster in smooth shading conditions, while flat shading benefited those with low ability particularly for the navigation task. Unexpectedly, immersive presentation did not improve performance significantly. These results demonstrate the impact of individual differences on spatial performance and help determine appropriate tasks, display parameters, training, and effective users for the VR system.