Comparison of Controller-Based Locomotion Techniques for Visual Observation in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Many virtual reality (VR) applications use teleport for locomotion. The non-continuous locomotion of teleport is suited for VR controllers and can minimize simulator sickness, but it can also reduce spatial awareness compared to continuous locomotion. Our aim was to create continuous, controller-based locomotion techniques that would support spatial awareness. We compared the new techniques, slider and grab, with teleport in a task where participants counted small visual targets in a VR environment. Task performance was assessed by asking participants to report how many visual targets they found. The results showed that slider and grab were significantly faster to use than teleport, and they did not cause significantly more simulator sickness than teleport. Moreover, the continuous techniques provided better spatial awareness than teleport.

Serial dependencies between locomotion and visual space

“…However, each participant only completed 2 Session, each consisting of 14 training trials, followed by 60 test trials, resulting in 120 test trials per participant. The number of trials per participant was reduced, since this kind of artificial locomotion increases the chance that participants might suffer from motion sickness 52 – 54 . To ensure that the reduced number of trials did not result in an underpowered design, we first recalculated the analysis of Experiment 1, but only for the first two sessions, to see if the observed effects survive.…”

Step by step - Serial dependencies between locomotion and visual space

“…However, each participant only completed 2 Session, each consisting of 14 training trials, followed by 60 test trials, resulting in 120 test trials per participant. The number of trials per participant was reduced, since this kind of artificial locomotion increases the chance that participants might suffer from motion sickness (Al Zayer et al, 2019;Clifton & Palmisano, 2020;Rantala et al, 2021). To ensure that the reduced number of trials did not result in an underpowered design, we first recalculated the analysis of Experiment 1, but only for the first two sessions, to see if the observed effects survive.…”

A Typology of Virtual Reality Locomotion Techniques

“…The typology so far has been utilized in several works to describe VR locomotion techniques' characteristics and interaction elements in areas such as video games [7] and commercial social VR platforms [8]. Moreover, it has been used in several comparative studies to justify the selection of certain VR locomotion techniques [9][10][11][12][13]. The fact that (i) the proposed typology of [3] is used widely [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] and is considered to have a significant research impact in the field [2] and (ii) the VR locomotion field is a considerably active research field [1,2], creates the need for this typology to be up-to-date and valid.…”