Evaluation Methodologies for Virtual Reality and Physical Test Environments for Spaceflight Design

NASA human factor design engineers wanted to examine if there would be any differences in testing low-fidelity conceptual designs in a physical environment compared to a virtual environment. An evaluation of two identical environments was conducted with subject matter experts (SMEs). Results indicated that when testing a design concept at this early stage, a high correlation between the two environments exists, meaning SMEs found little to no difference when evaluating a design in either a physical or a virtual environment. There are advantages and limitations to both environments. The virtual world gave the experts a better sense of the microgravity space and the relationships of space and human presence that are difficult to simulate in a 1-g physical environment. However, the interaction between human and mechanics is better enhanced in the physical world compared to the virtual world. These advantages and limitations of each environment are important; thus, at this early design life cycle phase, virtual reality shows great promise as an evaluation environment for testing early design concepts that will cost less, give more options, and increase designer’s time to design.