Indirect User Guidance by Pedestrians in Virtual Environments

Abstract

Scene exploration allows users to acquire scene knowledge on entering an unknown virtual environment. To support users in this endeavor, aided wayfinding strategies intentionally influence the user's wayfinding decisions through, e.g., signs or virtual guides. Our focus, however, is an unaided wayfinding strategy, in which we use virtual pedestrians as social cues to indirectly and subtly guide users through virtual environments during scene exploration. We shortly outline the required pedestrians' behavior and results of a first feasibility study indicating the potential of the general approach.