Navigation aids are central to immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences that involve physical locomotion. Their effectiveness depends not only on how much spatial information they provide, but also on how directly that information supports movement decisions. We compared three common guidance techniques for immersive VR wayfinding: a directional arrow, a minimap, and a compass. In a controlled room-scale VR study with 42 participants completing 1008 trials, participants navigated to target landmarks in a time-pressured maze with reduced visibility and forced route replanning. Across behavioral and eye-tracking measures, arrow guidance produced the strongest navigation performance, minimap guidance yielded intermediate performance, and compass cues performed worst, suggesting that during immersive locomotion users benefit from guidance that can be interpreted rapidly while moving. These results suggest that in demanding immersive locomotion tasks, interfaces that translate spatial information directly into actionable movement cues can outperform richer but more interpretive spatial representations. Our findings highlight the importance of designing XR navigation interfaces that minimize the cognitive translation between spatial information and movement decisions.

翻译：导航辅助工具是涉及物理位移的沉浸式虚拟现实（VR）体验的核心组成部分。其有效性不仅取决于所提供的空间信息量，更取决于这些信息对移动决策的直接支持程度。本研究比较了沉浸式VR寻路中三种常见的引导技术：方向箭头、缩略地图与罗盘。在一项受控的房间尺度VR研究中，42名参与者完成了1008次试验，在能见度降低且需强制重新规划路径的限时迷宫中导航至目标地标。综合行为数据与眼动追踪指标，箭头引导产生了最强的导航性能，缩略图引导表现居中，而罗盘提示效果最差，这表明在沉浸式移动过程中，用户更受益于能在移动时快速解读的引导方式。这些结果表明，在严苛的沉浸式移动任务中，将空间信息直接转化为可执行的移动提示的界面，可能优于信息更丰富但需更多解读的空间表征方式。我们的研究结果强调了设计XR导航界面时，应最大限度减少空间信息与移动决策之间认知转换的重要性。