Investigating the impact of visual reference grids on the calibration of auditory distance perception from different directions in VR

Abstract

Distance perception plays a critical role in shaping user experience in Virtual Reality (VR) environments. While auditory distance perception has been extensively studied in virtual acoustics, much less is known about how structured visual reference grids and calibration procedures jointly shape auditory distance perception across different directions in fully immersive VR. In particular, little is known about whether visual reference grids can improve auditory distance judgments across multiple directions and whether calibration with such grids can produce benefits that persist after the grids are removed. To address this issue, we conducted a user study consisting of three sequential phases: pre-test, calibration, and post-test. A multifactorial experimental design was adopted, incorporating 3 (visual reference grid conditions) × 3 (phases) × 5 (sound source distances) × 4 (sound source sectors), with a total of 90 participants. The results revealed that participants achieved more accurate auditory distance judgments, with greater calibration-related improvement, in the left and right sectors than in the front and back sectors. The presence of persistent visual reference grids significantly improved distance judgments across directions. In addition, when visual grids were presented only during the calibration phase, participants showed descriptively improved post-test performance relative to the no-grid baseline in the subsequent visual-reference-free test phase, although this effect was not uniform across all primary mixed-effects outcomes.