Is artificial stereoscopy really helpful for a correct distance perception in virtual environments?

A correct spatial representation of both real and artificial environments requires an appropriate perceptual spatial information processing. In Virtual Environments (VEs), depth and other spatial cues are rendered with stereoscopy by doubling the display and adjusting the angular distance to the viewer’s eyes to simulate binocular disparity. Although this ‘‘trick’’ sounds reasonable and many studies report great advantages of using stereoscopy in VEs, such as higher transfer of skills in Virtual Trainings (VTs) and a stronger sense of ‘‘Presence’’, results disagree when performing basic perceptual tasks such as evaluation of distances, showing poor performances in verbal metric reports in VEs in general.