Navigational Search in VR: Do we need to walk?

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Do we need full phys­i­cal motions for effec­tive nav­i­ga­tion through Virtual Environments? Recent results sug­gest that trans­la­tions might not be as impor­tant as pre­vi­ously believed, which could enable us to reduce over­all sim­u­la­tion effort and cost

Physical rota­tions and trans­la­tions are the basic con­stituents of nav­i­ga­tion behav­ior, yet there is mixed evi­dence about their rel­a­tive impor­tance for com­plex nav­i­ga­tion in vir­tual real­ity (VR). In the present exper­i­ment, 24 par­tic­i­pants wore head-mounted dis­plays and per­formed nav­i­ga­tional search tasks with rotations/translations con­trolled by phys­i­cal motion or joy­stick. As expected, phys­i­cal walk­ing showed per­for­mance ben­e­fits over joy­stick nav­i­ga­tion. Controlling trans­la­tions via joy­stick and rota­tions via phys­i­cal rota­tions led to better per­for­mance than joy­stick nav­i­ga­tion, and yielded almost com­pa­ra­ble per­for­mance to actual walk­ing in terms of search effi­ciency and time. Walking resulted, how­ever, in increased view­point changes and shorter nav­i­ga­tion paths, sug­gest­ing a rotation/translation trade­off and dif­fer­ent nav­i­ga­tion strate­gies. While pre­vi­ous stud­ies have empha­sized the impor­tance of full phys­i­cal motion via walk­ing (Ruddle & Lessels, 2006, 2009), our data sug­gests that con­sid­er­able nav­i­ga­tion improve­ments can already be gained by allow­ing for full-body rota­tions, with­out the con­sid­er­able cost, space, track­ing, and safety require­ments of free-space walk­ing setups.

Video below: Navigational search par­a­digm for rotations

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Publications

Nguyen-Vo, T., Riecke, B. E., & Stuerzlinger, W. (2017, April 6). Investigating the Effect of Simulated Reference Frames on Spatial Orientation in Virtual Reality [Poster]. Second International Workshop on Models and Representations in Spatial Cognition, Tübingen, Germany. (Download)
Adhikari, A., Riecke, B. E., Hashemian, A. M., Nguyen-Vo, T., Kruijff, E., & Heyde, M. von der. (2021). Embodied VR Flying Improves Spatial Orientation while Reducing Cybersickness [Talk]. ICSC 2021: 8th International Conference on Spatial Cognition, Rome, Italy. https://youtu.be/FbmE4SEISWU (Download)
Hashemian, A. M., Kitson, A., Nguyen-Vo, T., Benko, H., Stuerzlinger, W., & Riecke, B. E. (2018). Investigating a Sparse Peripheral Display in a Head-Mounted Display for VR Locomotion. 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), 571–572. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2018.8446345 (Download)
Nguyen-Vo, T., Riecke, B. E., & Stuerzlinger, W. (2018). Simulated Reference Frame: A Cost-Effective Solution to Improve Spatial Orientation in VR. 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), 415–422. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2018.8446383 (Download)
Nguyen-Vo, T., Riecke, B. E., Stuerzlinger, W., Pham, D.-M., & Kruijff, E. (2018). Do We Need Actual Walking in VR? Leaning with Actual Rotation Might Suffice for Efficient Locomotion [Poster]. Spatial Cognition 2018. (Download)
Nguyen-Vo, T., Riecke, B. E., & Stuerzlinger, W. (2017). Moving in a Box: Improving Spatial Orientation in Virtual Reality using Simulated Reference Frames. 207–208. https://doi.org/10.1109/3DUI.2017.7893344 (Download)
Riecke, B., Bodenheimer, B., McNamara, T., Williams, B., Peng, P., & Feuereissen, D. (2010). Do We Need to Walk for Effective Virtual Reality Navigation? Physical Rotations Alone May Suffice. In C. Hölscher, T. Shipley, M. Olivetti Belardinelli, J. Bateman, & N. Newcombe (Eds.), Spatial Cognition VII (Vol. 6222, pp. 234–247). Springer Berlin / Heidelberg.