Allocentric spatial representations dominate when switching between real and virtual worlds

After leaving virtual reality we can be surprised to find that we are facing a different direction than expected. How well can people maintain an accurate representation of one environment while immersed in another? Previous studies in virtual reality (VR) have found that allocentric cues contribute ~50% to the reach location of a remembered object when other objects are misaligned. Here we were interested in pointing locations when the whole environment was misaligned. Participants encoded the locations of target objects in one environment, virtual or real-world, and then switched to the other environment where the targets were not visible. Participants were asked to point to the remembered location of the targets in the first environment while being immersed in the second. The virtual environment could be aligned or misaligned below perceptual threshold to the real-world by ±2.6° (pitch). We found an interaction between pitch and order (encoding in the real-world with pointing in VR, or vice-versa). The pitch of the virtual environment strongly influenced pointing locations while in VR but had little effect on pointing locations in the real-world. There was a strong allocentric effect on pointing locations in VR and the real-world. We reran the experiment using a pitch of ±20°. We hypothesized that when the misalignment was obvious, participants would reduce their reliance on allocentric cues. However, the results were unchanged with a strong allocentric influence on pointing in VR and the real-world. When the whole environment is misaligned, pointing locations are based primarily on the relationship between the objects in the current environment. The findings suggest that when switching between real and virtual environments, people might only maintain an allocentric representation of the previously seen environment.