Simulated eye height impacts size perception differently depending on real-world posture

Changes in perceived eye height influence visually perceived object size in both the real world and in virtual reality. In virtual reality, conflicts can arise between the eye height in the real world and the eye height simulated in a VR application. We hypothesized that participants would be influenced more by variation in simulated eye height when they had a clear expectation about their eye height in the real world such as when sitting or standing, and less so when they did not have a clear estimate of the distance between their eyes and the real-life ground plane, e.g., when lying supine. Using virtual reality, 40 participants compared the height of a red square simulated at three different distances (6, 12, and 18 m) against the length of a physical stick (38.1 cm) held in their hands. They completed this task in all combinations of four real-life postures (supine, sitting, standing, standing on a table) and three simulated eye heights that corresponded to each participant’s real-world eye height (123cm sitting; 161cm standing; 201cm on table; on average). Confirming previous results, the square’s perceived size varied inversely with simulated eye height. Variations in simulated eye height affected participants’ perception of size significantly more when sitting than in the other postures (supine, standing, standing on a table). This shows that real-life posture can influence the perception of size in VR. However, since simulated eye height did not affect size estimates less in the lying supine than in the standing position, our hypothesis that humans would be more influenced by variations in eye height when they had a reliable estimate of the distance between their eyes and the ground plane in the real world was not fully confirmed.