Towards virtual reality infinite walking

Abstract

Redirected walking techniques can enhance the immersion and visual-vestibular comfort of virtual reality (VR) navigation, but are often limited by the size, shape, and content of the physical environments. We propose a redirected walking technique that can apply to small physical environments with static or dynamic obstacles. Via a head- and eye-tracking VR headset, our method detects saccadic suppression and redirects the users during the resulting temporary blindness. Our dynamic path planning runs in real-time on a GPU, and thus can avoid static and dynamic obstacles, including walls, furniture, and other VR users sharing the same physical space. To further enhance saccadic redirection, we propose subtle gaze direction methods tailored for VR perception. We demonstrate that saccades can significantly increase the rotation gains during redirection without introducing visual distortions or simulator sickness. This allows our method to apply to large open virtual spaces and small physical environments for room-scale VR. We evaluate our system via numerical simulations and real user studies.

Inattentional Blindness for Redirected Walking Using Dynamic Foveated Rendering

“…The authors performed extensive experiments to determine the thresholds of rotational and translational gains that can be introduced during the blink. Concurrently, Sun et al in [50] leveraged the perceptual blindness occurring before, during, and after the saccades to update the environment quickly over several frames. A common disadvantage of these techniques is the fact that they are disruptive to the cognitive task at hand, since they rely on stimulating saccades by introducing artifacts in the rendered image to distract the user's attention.…”

“…In our work, we leverage this physiological phenomenon to refresh the foveal zone render and therefore redirect the user multiple times per minute during blinks. Furthermore, we leverage information reported in recent studies for determining the maximum rotational and translational thresholds for VR during blinks and saccades [4,21,23,50] to update the VE and refresh the render without the user perceiving anything.…”

“…Although in recent years researchers have proposed many software-based techniques for simulating perceptually-guided foveated rendering e.g. [12,32,47,50], it was until the very recent introduction of Nvidia's Variable Rate Shading [29] that foveated rendering was supported in hardware and integrated into the rendering pipeline. This integration has reduced latency and aliasing effects close to zero as it was demonstrated by the real-time visualization platform called ZeroLight [30].…”

“…Applying these rotations to the VE, however subtle, can negatively impact the sense of immersion of the user. The reason for this is because these techniques either employ warping which introduces visual artifacts and distortions in the VE or even simulation sickness [10], or rely on forcing the user to look away by stimulating saccades in order to update the environment during a rapid eye movement as in [50].…”

The Security-Utility Trade-off for Iris Authentication and Eye Animation for Social Virtual Avatars

“…Eye Tracking in Virtual Reality Current applications of eye movements in VR are driving investments in the next generation of eye tracking hardware. Applications include foveated rendering [9,64], which optimizes computational resources in rendering by reducing resolution in the periphery, streaming algorithms that reduce the bandwidth of streamed 360 • content [24,38,52], intuitive interfaces for navigation and predicting intent [10,63], subtle gaze direction using luminance cues in the periphery to guide attention [31], redirected walking methods that take advantage of saccadic masking and blinks to orient the user within a limited physical space [46,79], classifying neurodegenerative disease through eye movements [62], virtual experiences designed to improve joint attention of children with ASD [55], and modeling how users explore 360 • content [73]. Eye tracking hardware in VR ranges from video-based oculography [45], electrooculography (EOG) [13], photo-sensor oculography (PS-OG) [48,84], and magnetic sclera coils [83].…”