Visual scale factor for speed perception

Speed perception is an important task depending mainly on optic flow that the driver must perform continuously to control his/her vehicle. Unfortunately it appears that in some driving simulators speed perception is under estimated, leading into speed production higher than in real conditions. Perceptual validity is then not good enough to study driver’s behavior. To solve this problem, a technique has recently seen the light, which consists of modifying the geometric field of view (GFOV) while keeping the real field of view (FOV) constant. We define our visual scale factor as the ratio between the GFOV and the FOV. The present study has been carried out on the SAAM dynamic driving simulator and aims at determining the precise effect of this visual scale factor on the speed perception. 20 subjects have reproduced 2 speeds (50 km/h and 90 km/h) without knowing the numerical values of these consigns, with 5 different visual scale factors: 0.70, 0.85, 1.00, 1.15 and 1.30. We show that speed perception significantly increases when the visual factor increases. A 0.15 modification of this factor is enough to obtain a significant effect. Furthermore, the relative variation of the speed perception is proportional to the visual scale factor. Besides, the modification of the geometric field of view remained unnoticed by all the subjects, which implies that this technique can be easily used to make drivers reduce their speed in driving simulation conditions. However, this technique may also modify perception of distances.