With the characteristics of “user-instant-interactivity”, “information visualization” and “situational simulative learning”, Virtual Reality is mainly used in “Geospatial Information Navigating System”, but due to the Spatial Disorientation caused by spatial environment which is built with Virtual Reality technology, the user’s cognitive learning efficiency is often reduced.
In order to solve the problem of Spatial Disorientation that happens during the user’s browsing in Virtual Reality, it is necessary to know how the user acquires the knowledge of space and spatial construction while wandering in the virtual space. This paper aims at collecting and researching relevant documents on spatial cognition of Virtual Reality, and exploring whether the information delivered by different kinds of landmark can be helpful to the user’s basic cognition on environment.
This research observes the effect on information-collecting in Virtual Environment after importing global landmark and local landmark, the knowledge learning process in spatial cognitive map and whether global landmark or local landmark in virtual space can influence the testee’s pathfinding. Finally the research makes sufficient performance comparison over the route taken by people who studies virtual space knowledge and the best route figured out by calculation.
The results show that the information of the two landmarks which can provide better directional indications and faster guidance for the testee to reach the destination is the greater achievement in pathfinding. And either in time or distance “global landmark” has a better performance without repeated browsing, which means it leads to less occurrence of Spatial Disorientation. Therefore, “global landmark” provides better directional instructions and enables the testee to have a better performance in pathfinding.
