Walking in meta quest - Idea

[balcerek]

It would be great to be able to walk in games without an any additional equipments like treadmill.

I think it is possible to achieve it with software upgrade. This is how I see it:

First, user creates boundary witch would have regular shape (rectangle), the initial position of user will be in the center of the rectangle. Regular shape of boundary could simplify tracking user's position. If user reaches the limit of boundary then he should just turn 180 degree, push the button on the controller so the view will turn the same, and the user will be able to continue walking forward

What do you thing about this idea, is it doable for facebook?

[oculusness]

@balcerek  this is what he posted

1. Define a Roomscale boundary from one side of the living room to the other.

2. Stand all the way at one end.

3. Enter the environment and use the two concave controller buttons to enter roam mode (or whatever it's called).

4. Walk across to the other side of the room.

5. Physically turn around to face the opposite way.

6. Use the joystick to rotate the view 180 degrees.

7. Repeat steps 4–6 a whole bunch of times.

[balcerek]

@kojack 

"I might make a demo and see how it feels"

what do you mean, you can make a demo? is it possible to implement this feature?

[kojack]

Yep. (I teach game dev for a living, including VR)

I should be able to knock out a test version of the idea on the weekend. I'm curious to see what it feels like.

If I get it working, I'll post a download here.

Of course Oculusness' link shows how to do it in existing games that have turning, but I don't know how natural that would feel compared to a single press or smooth head lock. I guess if a game has a 180 button that would feel more natural. I might try that method tomorrow in Bonelab or something.

[balcerek]

@kojack 

that's great. You are saying that sdk of meta quest allows to make such changes by independent developers? could you point where should I start reading doc to learn how to make this feature?

[oculusness]

@kojack  I did something like this just turning with the controllers 180 degrees a while back.

[kojack]

My weekend turned into a giant work crunch. But tonight I got a simple demo that seems to be working. I can walk, hold a button to lock the view to my head, turn around, release the button, then resume walking (different direction in real life, same direction in vr).

But my VR space is tiny for walking and it's 8pm here. Tomorrow I'll do a stand alone Quest build and try it in my back yard. If that works, I'll upload it.

[balcerek]

@kojack 

>But tonight I got a simple demo that seems to be working

that's great. could you explain how are you going to do it? will it be some kind of plugin for meta quest OS?

[kojack]

This is just a demo of the technique. It can't work with any other game. So all you can do is walk down the grey fence I built and past some cubes. 🙂

Messing with stuff at the OS level on a Quest isn't in my skill set, and Meta don't want people to do it.

(I can hijack Oculus PC VR apps and mess with them, but that technique could get you banned as it's similar to how cheats work)

[balcerek]

@kojack 

do you know where i can send this idea, so maybe someone from meta could get interested and implement this feature in the next release of thier OS?

[kojack]

I did a quest build and went out in my backyard.

**bleep**, this feels better than I thought. I went for a 26m linear walk with only 5m of boundary. But I could also change direction at any time, so I could cover a large game area freely, not just walk along a path.

Here's a link to an APK you can install on a Quest. Tested on Quest 3, but should work on others. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a2r7PH8AVmpZ5LnT_kIqAfKonL_BIj03/view?usp=drive_link

The only control is holding A on the right controller to lock your head.

Also here's a video of me walking. The height may be a little odd, my yard is slightly sloped so I'm actually walking up hill / down hill. 🙂