Artificial Landmarks to Facilitate Spatial Learning and Recalling for Curved Visual Wall Layout in Virtual Reality

Current VR (Virtual Reality) browsing interfaces provide few landmarks, particularly, less is known about the effects of 3D landmarks on facilitating spatial learning and recalling for VR browsing interfaces. In this work, the implementation of a new artificial landmark (3D visual pin) along with three previous landmarks (grid, image, and anchor) are presented with a curved visual wall layout, in which we examined the effects on facilitating learning and recalling items' locations in small and large item sets. We found that both the 3D pin and the anchor interfaces assisted multiple targets retrieving and recalling, compared to the grid interface, and more preferences of 3D pins, but no significant difference of retrieval and recall performances between the 3D pin and the anchor interfaces. The image interface had little impact on trial completion time, but significantly improved the selection accuracy compared to the grid interface. The findings provide the possibility of enabling artificial landmarks for future VR browsing interfaces.