Comparative Evaluation of Differing Levels of Information Presentation in 3D Mini-Maps on Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in VR

Maps have long been a favored tool for navigation in both physical and virtual environments. As a navigation aid in virtual reality, map content and appearance can differ significantly. In this paper, three mini-maps are addressed: the WiM-3DMap, which provides a standard World-in-Miniature of the city model; the novel UC-3DMap, featuring important landmarks alongside ordinary buildings within the user’s vicinity; and the LM-3DMap, presenting only important landmarks. These mini-maps offer varying levels of building detail, potentially affecting spatial knowledge acquisition performance in diverse ways. A comparative study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of WiM-3DMap, UC-3DMap, LM-3DMap, and a baseline condition without a mini-map in spatial tasks such as spatial updating, landmark recall, landmark placement, and route recall. The findings demonstrated that LM-3DMap and UC-3DMap outperform WiM-3DMap in the tasks of spatial updating, landmark placement and route recall. However, the absence of detailed local context around the user may impede the effectiveness of LM-3DMap, as evidenced by UC-3DMap’s superior performance in the landmark placement task. These findings underscore the differences in effectiveness among various mini-maps that present distinct levels of building detail. A key conclusion is that including ordinary building information in the user’s immediate surroundings can significantly enhance the performance of a mini-map relying solely on landmarks.