Rapid, continuous movement between nodes as an accessible virtual reality locomotion technique

Habgood, M P J and Moore, David (2018). Rapid, continuous movement between nodes as an accessible virtual reality locomotion technique. SHU Research Data Archive (SHURDA). http://doi.org/10.17032/shu-180008

Summary

The confounding effect of player locomotion on the vestibulo-ocular reflex is one of the principal causes of motion sickness in immersive virtual reality. Continuous motion is particularly problematic for stationary user configurations, and teleportation has become the prevailing approach for providing accessible locomotion. Unfortunately, teleportation can also increase disorientation and reduce a player’s sense of presence within a VR environment. This paper presents an alternative locomotion technique designed to preserve accessibility while maintaining feelings of presence. This is a node-based navigation system which allows the player to move between predefined node positions using a rapid, continuous, linear motion. An evaluation was undertaken to compare this locomotion technique with commonly used, teleportation-based and continuous walking approaches. Thirty-six participants took part in a study which examined motion sickness and presence for each technique, while navigating around a virtual house using PlayStation VR. Contrary to intuition, we show that rapid movement speeds reduce players’ feelings of motion sickness as compared to continuous movement at normal walking speeds

Keywords:

PlayStation VR

Creators:

Academic units:

Faculty of Science, Technology and Arts (STA) > Academic Departments > Department of Computing
Faculty of Science, Technology and Arts (STA) > Research Centres > Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute (C3RI)
Faculty of Science, Technology and Arts (STA) > Research Centres > Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute (C3RI) > Communication and Computing Research Centre (CCRC)

Funders: