Safe Walking Zones: Visual Guidance for Redirected Walking in Confined Real-World Spaces

Abstract

Walking is usually considered the most natural form of self-motion in a virtual environment (VE). However, the confined physical workspace of typical virtual reality (VR) labs often prevents natural exploration of larger VEs. Redirected walking (RDW) has been introduced as a potential solution to this restriction, but corresponding techniques often induce enormous manipulations if the workspace is considerably small and lack natural experiences therefore. In this paper we propose a user interface approach that supports natural walking in a potentially infinite virtual scene while confined to a considerably restricted physical workspace. This virtual locomotion technique relies on a safety volume, which is displayed as a semi-transparent half-capsule, inside which the user can walk without manipulations caused by RDW. We designed a circular redirection approach when the user leaves this safety volume that is complemented by a deterrent approach for user guidance outside the safety volume. We discuss in detail the process of transferring user movements inside these regions to the virtual camera in order to enable walking between points of interest in VEs, and we present the results of a usability study in which we evaluate the approach.