Virtual Room Re-Creation: A New Measure of Room Size Perception

The perception of the size of indoor rooms is traditionally measured with spaciousness ratings or verbal estimations of width and length, but these measures inherently focus on specific aspects of rooms that may not accurately capture a holistic perception of room size. The current study asked users to re-create the size of virtual rooms with a visual matching task by adjusting the dimensions of comparison virtual rooms to match those of a previously viewed virtual room. In addition to estimating room size with this novel room re-creation measure, participants also provided spaciousness ratings and verbal reports of length and width for each room. The results indicate that users accurately estimate relative room size using room re-creation. Room dimensions set in the room re-creation task were more accurate to the programmed dimensions and less variable than verbal reports. The room re-creation measure was positively correlated with spaciousness ratings, indicating that it also captures holistic perception of room size. Thus, the virtual room re-creation task accurately assesses both holistic and dimensional perception of the size of virtual rooms in an informative, quantitative manner. The room re-creation measure exemplifies the ability to use virtual reality as a unique tool for measuring space perception. The current study demonstrates the implementation of the novel room re-creation task and its ability to accurately capture the perception of virtual rooms, which can serve as a foundation for future studies to assess the ability of virtual room re-creation to capture the perception of real-world rooms. This new measure of room size perception is relevant to theoretical space perception research as well as applied research in architecture and interior design.