ABSTRACT
Virtual Reality (VR) as an innovative medium trough which knowledge acquisition turns possible. Spatial knowledge acquired in VR seems to be similar to knowledge acquired in not simulated environments. Moreover, spatial cognition derived from VR contains several informations generally used in real environment exploration. As far as spatial cognition is concerned, the nature of the activity and the mode of learning in a large scale VR environment may meaningful affect spatial learning. In a series of experiments we have compared performances in active exploration conditions, within a complex VR environment, with performances in spatial knowledge evaluation tasks. The VR environment is a close large scale environment lacking in explicit landmarks, such as objects or direction cues. In exploring the building participants were divided in two experimental group. An efficient active exploration group in which participants had to explore the entire building avoiding to return on previous travelled paths.
