virtual reality, spatial size perception, design, Technology, Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General), TA1-2040, Biology (General), QH301-705.5, Physics, QC1-999, Chemistry, QD1-999

This article presents a user study into user perception of an object’s size when presented in virtual reality. Critical for users understanding of virtual worlds is their perception of the size of virtual objects. This article is concerned with virtual objects that are within arm’s reach of the user. Examples of such virtual objects could be virtual controls such as buttons, dials and levers that the users manipulate to control the virtual reality application. This article explores the issue of a user’s ability to judge the size of an object relative to a second object of a different colour. The results determined that the points of subjective equality for height and width judgement tasks ranging from 10 to 90 mm were all within an acceptable value. That is to say, participants were able to perceive height and width judgements very close to the target values. The results for height judgement task for just-noticeable difference were all less than 1.5 mm and for the width judgement task less than 2.3 mm.