Bookshelf and Bird: Enabling Real Walking in Large VR Spaces through Cell-Based Redirection

PubDate: April 2017

Teams: Virginia Tech

Writers: Run Yu ; Wallace S. Lages ; Mahdi Nabiyouni ; Brandon Ray ; Navyaram Kondur ; Vikram Chandrashekar ; Doug A. Bowman

PDF: Bookshelf and Bird: Enabling Real Walking in Large VR Spaces through Cell-Based Redirection

Abstract

We present two novel redirection techniques to enable real walking in large virtual environments (VEs) using only “room-scale” tracked spaces. The techniques, called Bookshelf and Bird, provide narrative-consistent redirection to keep the user inside the physical space, and require the user to walk to explore the VE. The underlying concept, called cell-based redirection, is to divide the virtual world into discrete cells that have the same size as the physical tracking space. The techniques then can redirect the users without altering the relationship between the user, the physical space, and the virtual cell. In this way, users can always access the entire cell using real walking.