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How to solve locomotion in VR

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
I've been thinking about this for the past few days and I'm hoping someone can come up with a solution.
Preface: I'm not trying to find flaws with any of the current 3 VR headsets. This is a more general issue I think needs to be solved as VR advances.

How do you design a game to allow people to roam around a variable play-space without defaulting to the minimum required size?

Right now the Vive is the first system to allow room scale. Their minimum play area is 1.5m x 2.5m IIRC. So let's say we have three users.

A) User with a 5' x 8' play area
B) User with a 10' x 10' play area
C) User with a 20' x 20' play area

The only design that would take advantage of this difference would dynamically create the play area based on the user entered play dimensions. But now how do you make pre-designed levels that take advantage of more area?

Hover Junkers is quite cool, but despite their clever travel mechanic I'm betting the hovercraft are all 1.5m x 2.5m to cater to the minimum spec.

Other games are using teleport to get around this problem, but if you can teleport then why have a large area to begin with? Just stand in one spot and teleport to move anywhere you like. Why walk when you can fly?

I also suppose you could do some clever trickery to cause people to turn without realizing it, but this would only work in a very large (at least C above) area - which most people won't have at home.

Has anyone seen a good solution? I'd like to think treadmills will solve this and allow unlimited movement, but I think they're still inferior to actually allowing someone to move around a real space. Devices like the OMNI seem to roughly mimic translation by walking whereas an ideal solution would feel identical to actually moving around.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke
15 REPLIES 15

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
From the link to Vanishing Realms, coming for the Vive:
"There’s a lot of walking in Vanishing Realms: Rite of Steel, as you might imagine, so being able to teleport quickly and precisely is important. It was suggested to VRFocus that the entire videogame could be played without taking a single step, however the experience was significantly better when minor single-step movements were handled by the player’s own physicality and larger, quicker progression through the teleportation mechanic."

This could be part of the way towards a solution. It will be interesting to see whether this is one of the better solutions for first-gen headsets.

BTW, Marvel - Nightcrawler VR. Copyright Zoomie 2016 🙂
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

rlabelle
Protege
Well I came home a few days ago, and in preparation for the new VR headsets, my wife had decided to sell our couches, lol. Granted they were worn and ready for replacement, but she really wanted to create an open area to play with room scale. So, for a few months at least, I will have a good 18 x 25 area to work with. I need to find a reasonable cable management system for a space that big. I have managed to create a good 5x5 space with dev kits using mildly tensioned bands and ceiling mounted cable, but I will need something more elaborate to cover 20+ feet of space.



I have ordered Virtuix Omni and it is the simple solution to locomotion, but still not the same as walking around a room. Granted my setup is not a typical as most people do not have wives as awesome and supporting as mine, lol. It will be exciting playing with the tech and finding descent solutions that work. Just need to get tech in hand so we can start experimenting! lol. G25 is set up while experimenting with Project Cars, which is incredible btw if no one has tried it.

Idealy I think it would be cool to establish a game where each room was say 20x20 or less, assuming you have that much space. Everytime you open a door to go to next room, there would be a slight loading pause at a black screen, when the screen came back up you would be facing the wrong way, needing to turn around and thus be walking around the new room. All speculation of course, I would like to make quick unity mockups for proof of concept once I get all hardware in hand.
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nightauditor198
Adventurer
I don´t know if this will be such a big issue as a lot of people seem to expect.

I have been "walking" through so many levels whith the DK2 while standing or even sitting, as probably most of us have. I do not think that it is a dealbraker. I would have no problem to play an open world game like that.

For the moment my plan is to simply stand and move with the controller. You can still crouch, lean, duck and sidestep once you stand. When I enter a vehicle, I push the rift up, sit in my simrig and put the rift back on again and recenter the view. I have done that with the DK2 and it works rather well. It was mostly the short cables that bugged me the most, because I always had to move very carefully while standing up.


It´s not perfect, no doubt, but it works. I might think differently with the CV1 and prefer a teleportation mechanic, who knows.

I am interested to see your views on the Omni!

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
Unfortunately movement with a controller can induce motion-sickness in some people. Moving the view with a controller (rather than the head) is even worse, but locomotion can be just as bad for some people.

I agree about cables being a pain. Many people say it's an overstated fear for room-scale VR, but whenever I stand up with my DK2 I have to be careful not to tangle or step on my cords. The DK2 also has a pretty short (~8'-9' cable) so hopefully a longer cable makes management easier.

To be fair, I haven't ever tripped or fallen so maybe I'm just over-cautious. My buddy tried Windlands standing last night and he was rocking like a tree in a hurricane.

rlabelle - Nice rig dude. We talked about a tension ceiling mount in another thread and here you have one!
I'd love to hear your experiences with it. Until we get wifi, I think it's the best solution.

How will game developers allow users like rlabelle to benefit from a massive play area without handicapping players with a min-spec room? Are we limited to dynamically generated areas, based on whatever the player has available? Are we stuck using a hybrid teleport/walk system for now?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

edmg
Trustee
"Zoomie" wrote:
Unfortunately movement with a controller can induce motion-sickness in some people. Moving the view with a controller (rather than the head) is even worse, but locomotion can be just as bad for some people.


And some people complained that FPS games made them sick when they first became a genre. How many people complain today?

I think a lot is down to expectations, rather than fundamental limitations of the human body. The adults who did get sick playing FPS games probably stopped playing them, the kids who grew up on FPS games don't have a problem with them, and developers tweaked their movement animations so anyone who's still sensitive isn't affected as much.

On the plus side, if it leads to the death of the cutscene, it won't be a bad thing.

Percy1983
Superstar
I will say when I have stood and played with a rift I have found myself swaying, I knew in my head I wasn't moving but couldn't override it, this was mostly when moving sideways.

I will say I didn't feel sick or anything so don't class it as a problem and can guess it may get better with more time.
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rlabelle
Protege

I found the more actual moving you do in real life helps alleviate the motion sickness.  Playing Windlands while sitting with a controller gave us vertigo and made us sick.  By standing and physically turning (not using look stick) It helped considerably and adds to immersion.  Also, as a side, using the Top Shot Elite as a controller is a descent substitute until we get our motion controllers.

https://youtu.be/HYrsx8CScAc

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Minitu
Expert Protege
I easilly get nausea when in the back of a car, so I have some fear if my body is unable to adapt to Rift. But, hey, lets be positive, Rifts addiction can also be the cure for my nausea.

Zoomie, glad to see you trying to find ideas to overcome some legitimate concerns about roomscale. Being some of us sceptical its no bad if its constructive. To the point, play area is difficult to map sometimes, some areas have columns there or some partial obstacle. so you need to dinamically generate a playground... as for example a virtual kitchen to show super chef skills. In my case I have a 1x2 m2 area, so I could move just laterally, and almost reach everything without moving ;).

rlabelle,  wish I had that awesome area (and wife btw, 😉 ). I could have half of this area if I swap my child bedroom with my comp one. But not likely. I really could by a large house, but for now, just don't feel like doing it. lol. who knows?




Soon upgrading to Ryzen

rogueqd
Protege

edmg said:



Zoomie wrote:

Unfortunately movement with a controller can induce motion-sickness in some people. Moving the view with a controller (rather than the head) is even worse, but locomotion can be just as bad for some people.




And some people complained that FPS games made them sick when they first became a genre. How many people complain today?


Ok, my only experience so far is with Gear VR, but since I don't usually experience motion sickness in normal situations (reading in a car, etc) I thought I'd dive in the deep end to see how it went....
I completed the Gear VR Tutorial just for the sake of it, then use SideloadVR to install Quake. I didn't feel motion sick at all but after 20 minutes or so my stomach had a convulsion, so I stopped there.
A few days later and I'm totally used to it, I played Dreadhalls turning with the controller because I was comfy on the couch and couldn't be bothered standing up, no sickness. The first thing I do with a new game is check the options for comfort mode and turn it off.

So I agree with edmg, people will adapt to it. Some might not, but some people don't like to drive cars. There are still lots of cars around. Worrying that VR can induce motion sickness in some people is like worrying that some people get motion sickness on boats. There are still many boat owners around.