# Exploring Virtual Environments to Assess the Quality of Public Spaces
## 2 Literature Review
### Contributions of the Research  
Although it is increasingly used to assess natural or urban landscapes, the validity of virtual reality in this particular case has been little explored. Few comparative studies exist. The oldest [20] compares the assessment of walkability using Google Street View, the point of view of local residents, and field visits based on 90 participants. The authors conclude that these three methods provide correlated results for traffic safety, aesthetics, sidewalk quality, and physical barriers, but that the Google Street View assessment is the most correlated with the assessment by locals. This result suggests that video is a good evaluation tool that deserves to be compared with immersive virtual reality. [PERSON] et al. [22] compared dynamic video with a fixed view to a 360\({}^{\circ}\) immersive dynamic video viewed through a headset. The same 50 individuals were confronted with both conditions but the order of presentation was counterbalanced. His results show a more favorable evaluation of walkability in the immersive condition. [PERSON] et al. [23] compared the immersive virtual reality condition (\(n=21\)) with the site visit condition (\(n=16\)) but the evaluation carried out focused more on the beauty and other appearance attributes of 11 landscapes. In this protocol, different people were placed in each of the conditions. The very similar results obtained in the two conditions prompted the authors to propose replacing the gold-standard on-site visit with virtual reality for reasons of efficiency. Finally, ref. [21] compared Google Street View images for a web-based administration of streetscape evaluation to an evaluation following an immersive virtual reality visit. In this study, 25 participants evaluated the two situations 7 days apart. They concluded that the VR-based streetscape evaluation method has better explanatory power than the web-based streetscape evaluation method. We aim to scrutinize this assertion using dynamic scenes and virtual environments. Sustainable development issues encourage the design of spaces conducive to the use of active modes, which are defined in the literature as having good walkability and cyclability. Research has shown that these two characteristics are closely linked to how the spaces are perceived by their users [1,2]. It is therefore entirely appropriate to look at ways of taking users' points of view into account, both in the indicators to be used and in the methods of visualizing the spaces to be assessed. In this research, we use existing indicators (SUMI and PLOS), which we combine with other indicators such as the feeling of safety and relaxation, the perception of activities to be carried out in the space, and overall perceptions of the suitability of these spaces for walking and cycling in general and a behavioral intention to walk or cycle in these spaces. One of the central challenges associated with the evaluation of spaces by their likely users is to get as close as possible to an evaluation following an on-site visit or by local people, which is the gold standard [23]. There is no longer any need to prove that these methods are costly and impossible in the case of the rehabilitation of a site that does not yet exist in reality. Virtual reality is, therefore, a promising alternative since the visual information in VR corresponds to that experienced in the real world, where the visual scene is updated with head movements. Unfortunately, research into the validity of virtual reality in the assessment of landscapes or streetscapes has been reduced to very little. The literature has shown that video can advantageously replace on-site visits [21], particularly when they are offered with the possibility of a 360\({}^{\circ}\) view using virtual reality headsets [22]. As can be seen in Table 1, virtual visits to real environment have already been compared to on-site visits [23] or to static images via Google Street View [20] but public space auditing of real places was never compared to immersive visits in virtual environments.