Virtual City Design Based on Urban Image Theory

This paper aims to evaluate what effect applying residents’ urban image to virtual city design (a real time virtual model of an actual city) has on wayfinding performance during ‘flying-based’ navigation mode. Two experiments were conducted to compare two virtual city designs using the virtual model of Tel Aviv city. One design included highlighted urban elements from the residents’ urban image, while in the second design no highlighted elements were included. The experiments proved that using the elements of the residents’ urban image in a virtual city design enhances the performance of all participants in the wayfinding tasks, and especially those with a low level of spatial knowledge. Analysis of the trajectory patterns and the verbal reports of the participants during navigation showed that the urban image design facilitates a more intensive use of a position-based strategy, in addition to the path-integration wayfinding strategy, which was found to be dominant in the virtual model without the highlighted urban image elements. On the basis of these findings we propose principles for designing virtual cities from a perspective of wayfinding.