How our sense of direction changes in virtual and mixed reality

What is it about?

When we move through the world, our brain usually keeps track of where we are and where things are around us. We tested whether this happens automatically in virtual reality and mixed reality. Across five experiments, we found that people could suppress this spatial updating in fully virtual environments, but not when real-world information was present in mixed reality or the physical world. This suggests that our brain does not treat virtual and mixed environments in the same way, even when the tasks appear very similar.

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Photo by XR Expo on Unsplash

Photo by XR Expo on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findings show that spatial updating—a process that is highly automatic in everyday life—does not operate in the same way across physical, mixed, and fully virtual environments. People could suppress spatial updating in virtual reality, but not when real-world information was present. This suggests that even well-practiced links between perception and action depend on context. The findings help explain how people adapt to immersive technologies and may inform the design of virtual and mixed-reality systems for navigation, learning, and training.