People navigating a virtual city completed their route faster under a longer teleportation limit, yet later sketched its layout less successfully. The single peer-reviewed experiment involved 60 participants and compared three distance limits. Because each limit was tied to a particular scene variant, the difference cannot be attributed to distance alone. Brief visual transitions supplied no significant mapping advantage.
After exploring a virtual city, participants drew less complete maps under the condition allowing jumps of up to 25 metres. Their mean score was 9.83, against 12.80 with a limit of 5 metres and 12.52 with a limit of 15 metres. The two shorter conditions did not differ significantly. Each limit was paired with a fixed scene variant, so scene appearance remains an alternative contributor to the differences.[1]
The single peer-reviewed experiment involved 60 people, each trying the three limits in turn. After following route markers through the city, they navigated back to the starting point with those guides removed. Two raters independently scored remembered roads, intersections and landmarks, emphasizing their connections rather than exact distances. Half the participants teleported instantaneously; the remainder saw a 0.3-second visual transition. That transition yielded no significant sketch-map advantage.[1]
Navigation took longer with a limit of 5 metres than with a limit of 25 metres. A possible balance between traversal speed and learning the environment therefore emerged within this particular design. Most participants came from a university population. The fixed transition duration also meant greater displacement produced faster visual motion. Sickness symptoms were generally low, with statistical approaches giving inconsistent findings about how movement settings affected discomfort.[1]
