Redirecting walking and driving for natural navigation in immersive virtual environments

Area of Science:

• Human-computer interaction
• Virtual reality locomotion
• Perception psychology

Background:

• Real walking interfaces enhance navigation but are limited by physical space.
• Redirected walking techniques theoretically allow navigation in arbitrarily large virtual environments.
• Long-distance travel in virtual reality using only walking is impractical.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the application of redirected walking concepts to transportation devices.
• To determine perceptual detection thresholds for redirected driving.
• To compare redirected driving with redirected walking for virtual environment navigation.

Main Methods:

• Conducted psychophysical experiments to measure redirected driving perception.
• Compared experimental results with existing redirected walking data.
• Implemented and tested redirected walking-and-driving systems in virtual reality labs.

Main Results:

• Redirected walking and driving approaches are feasible in immersive virtual reality.
• Perceptual thresholds for redirected driving were determined.
• The study demonstrated the potential for combining walking and driving in VR.

Conclusions:

• Redirected walking-and-driving systems can overcome space limitations in virtual reality.
• These hybrid approaches leverage the benefits of both walking and vehicle-based locomotion.
• This research opens new possibilities for realistic and extended virtual environment navigation.