UNMET NEED
Virtual reality (VR) technology is used in various domains such as gaming, entertainment, education, healthcare, and business. Locomotion is one of the most significant unsolved problems in the field of Virtual Reality (VR). To deliver an immersive and comfortable VR experience, the coupling between physical and virtual motions is critically important. Most VR experiences either restrict user movement within limited “room-scale” spaces (e.g. 4m x 4m) or utilize alternative virtual locomotion techniques that are widely associated with negative effects such as simulator sickness and spatial disorientation such as flying, teleportation, etc.
Redirected walking is a VR locomotion technique which enables users to navigate virtual environments (VEs) that are spatially larger than the available physical tracked space. Limitations of existing techniques, such as warping, introduce visual artifacts and distort the user’s field of view, forcing users to look away by stimulating saccades with the use of flashing spots in screen space, or using accelerated head rotations to redirect the users. These stimulants can be distracting to the user and can result in less immersive user experience.
