It Is Only Eco-Logical: Direct Perception for XR Research

Direct perception, as part of the ecological approach to perception, defines a relationship between an organism and their environment that is specified by lawful information.Researchers can apply the ecological approach to eXtended Reality (XR) work to obtain a richer understanding of users' perception-action coordination in novel virtual settings.To encourage widespread adoption of this theoretical framework, this methodological paper introduces four major concepts from the ecological approach that are highly relevant to XR applications.We also provide an overview of existing literature to illustrate how those concepts may be used to inform and test their designs.These elements include the study of calibration and attunement, affordances, action based responses, and intrinsic scaling for measurements.The goal of this work is to increase awareness of the value of the ecological approach, and to provide a practical, evidence-based reference for researchers interested in applying these techniques in XR research.