Multimodal Exploration of Terrain with Immersive Interactions

Virtual reality (VR) lets users explore objects in an immersive environment. Users freely interact with objects in a virtual environment (VE), where they can assign physical properties to objects, make them animate or inanimate, and have them respond according to the underlying characteristics. This research explores geological topology using VR. In addition, users studied a terrain model in a multimodal audio-visual VE. Initial findings showed that users preferred multimodal exploration of terrain models compared to the traditional unimodal vision-only version. Two audio-enhanced modes were used: “Continuous” and “Sporadic.”