State-of-the-art virtual environment systems offer new flexibility in the design of experiments for active perception. Conversely, perceptual human factors issues are key to successful virtual environments. I will briefly discuss how human visually-guided behaviour can be studied with virtual reality tools as well as important human factors issues, caveats and limitations in the use of virtual reality methodology. I will also discuss recent experiments that we have been conducting to study human behaviour using multimodal immersive virtual environments.

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Robert Allison is Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Vice-Dean in the Lassonde School of Engineering, York University. He is also the Associate Director of the Centre for Vision Research. Allison works on perception of space and self-motion in virtual environments, the measurement and analysis of eye movements, and stereoscopic vision. His applied research enables effective technology for advanced virtual reality and augmented reality and for the design of stereoscopic displays.

Sponsors and collaborators of his applied research have included the National Research Council of Canada, CAE, IMAX, Christie Digital, startup companies and other small and medium enterprises, and a number of Canadian government departments at the national and provincial level.

He is recipient of the Premier's Research Excellence Award from the Province of Ontario in recognition for research in human stereoscopic vision and depth perception. He has also received a McDonnell-Pew Visiting Fellowship, an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Japan Society for Promotion of Science Invitation Fellowship, and an Australian Research Council International Fellowship.