Visual Fidelity of Virtual Information: Why and How Is a Virtual MUTCD Needed for Driving Simulation

Driving simulation has been widely accepted as an alternative tool to study topics related to vehicle driving for decades. The issues of fidelity and validity have been a concern of researchers throughout the history of driving simulation. Understanding the limitations of a driver simulator is a prerequisite to ensure that simulator metrics are useful for research purposes. This research explores characteristics of driver visual acuity and its influence on a driver's ability to sense and perceive the virtual environment of a driving simulator. The product of this research are lessons on how to determine if a particular study is a candidate for a driving simulator and how to establish standards to adequately configure the simulation and model studied environment base on limits of vision. An interdisciplinary literature review of relevant topics is included. Two vision restraints were introduced and applied to estimate the limits of vision in a driving simulation system: 1) acuity; and 2) resolution. The analysis revealed the visual acuity and resolution required to ensure an individual can sense details of visual information in a given driving simulation system. The results also revealed the requirements of information provided in virtual scenes that can be sensed and perceived by an individual in a configured driving simulation system to ensure the validity of the studies. The correlation between minimum requirements to establish simulation system and real-world standards was analyzed. In order to ensure the validity of the result of driving simulator studies, a manual introducing explicit standards to instruct researchers how to establish a reliable virtual environment is necessary just as the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) provides standards and instruction to traffic engineers.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND30 Simulation and Measurement of Vehicle and Operator Performance.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Zhao, Xi
  • Sarasua, Wayne A
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Configuration management; Driving simulators; Human factors; Standards; Validity; Virtual reality; Visual perception
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I80: Accident Studies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01519478
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-5687
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 25 2014 2:25PM