research-article

Understanding User Experiences Across VR Walking-in-place Locomotion Methods

Authors:

Leon Cewei Foo,

Jeannie Su Ann Lee,

Xiao-Feng Kenan Kok,

Megani RajendranAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Article No.: 517, Pages 1 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501975

Published: 29 April 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Navigating large-scale virtual spaces is a major challenge in Virtual Reality (VR) applications due to real-world spatial limitations. Walking-in-place (WIP) locomotion solutions may provide a natural approach for VR use cases that require locomotion to share similar qualities with walking in real-life. However, there is limited knowledge on the range of experiences across common WIP methods to inform the design of usable WIP solutions using consumer-accessible components. This paper contributes to this knowledge via a user study with 40 participants that experienced several easy-to-setup WIP methods in a VR commuting simulation. A nuanced understanding of cybersickness and exertion relationships and walking affordances based on different tracker setups were among the findings derived from a corroborated analysis of think-aloud, interview, and observational data, supplemented with self-reports of VR sickness, presence and flow. Practical design insights were then constructed along the dimensions of cybersickness, affordances, space and user interfaces.

Supplementary Material

MP4 File (3491102.3501975-video-figure.mp4)

Video Figure

Download
279.14 MB

MP4 File (3491102.3501975-video-preview.mp4)

Video Preview

Download
42.97 MB

MP4 File (3491102.3501975-talk-video.mp4)

Talk Video

Download
67.32 MB

References

[1]

Yangyi Ang, Puteri Suhaiza Sulaiman, Rahmita Wirza O.K. Rahmat, and Noris Mohd Norowi. 2019. Swing-In-Place (SIP): A Less Fatigue Walking-in-Place Method with Side-Viewing Functionality for Mobile Virtual Reality. IEEE Access 7(2019), 183985–183995.

[2]

Aperium. 2021. Aperium Reality – K-01 Pod. https://aperiumreality.com/index.php/en/K01/

[3]

Costas Boletsis. 2017. The New Era of Virtual Reality Locomotion: A Systematic Literature Review of Techniques and a Proposed Typology. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 1, 4 (2017).

[4]

Costas Boletsis, Jarl Erik Cedergren, and Marco Porta. 2019. VR Locomotion in the New Era of Virtual Reality: An Empirical Comparison of Prevalent Techniques. Adv. in Hum.-Comp. Int. 2019 (Jan 2019), 15 pages.

Digital Library

[5]

Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2012. Thematic analysis. (2012).

[6]

Luís Bruno, Maurício Sousa, Alfredo Ferreira, João Madeiras Pereira, and Joaquim Jorge. 2017. Hip-directed walking-in-place using a single depth camera. International Journal of Human Computer Studies 105, May 2016(2017), 1–11.

[7]

Heni Cherni, Natacha Métayer, and Nicolas Souliman. 2020. Literature review of locomotion techniques in virtual reality. International Journal of Virtual Reality 20 (Mar 2020), 1–20.

[8]

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. P. S. Series, Vol. 54. Harper & Row, New York, NY, USA. 303 pages.

[9]

Massimiliano Di Luca, Hasti Seifi, Simon Egan, and Mar Gonzalez-Franco. 2021. Locomotion Vault: The Extra Mile in Analyzing VR Locomotion Techniques. In Proc. CHI ’21. ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 128, 10 pages.

Digital Library

[10]

Stefan Engeser and Falko Rheinberg. 2008. Flow, performance and moderators of challenge-skill balance. Motivation and Emotion 32, 3 (2008), 158–172.

[11]

Inan Evin, Toni Pesola, Maximus D. Kaos, Tuukka M. Takala, and Perttu Hämäläinen. 2020. 3PP-R: Enabling Natural Movement in 3rd Person Virtual Reality. In Proc. CHI PLAY ’20 (Virtual Event, Canada). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 438–449.

Digital Library

[12]

Jeff Feasel, Mary C. Whitton, and Jeremy D. Wendt. 2008. LLCM-WIP: Low-latency, continuous-motion walking-in-place. In Proc. IEEE 3DUI 2008. IEEE Comput. Soc, New Jersey, United States, 97–104.

Digital Library

[13]

Jann Philipp Freiwald, Oscar Ariza, Omar Janeh, and Frank Steinicke. 2020. Walking by Cycling: A Novel In-Place Locomotion User Interface for Seated Virtual Reality Experiences. In Proc. CHI ’20. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1–12.

Digital Library

[14]

Julian Frommel, Sven Sonntag, and Michael Weber. 2017. Effects of Controller-Based Locomotion on Player Experience in a Virtual Reality Exploration Game. In Proc. FDG ’17. ACM, New York, NY, USA.

Digital Library

[15]

Cyberith GmbH. 2021. Virtual Reality Locomotion - Cyberith Virtualizer VR Treadmills. https://www.cyberith.com/

[16]

Nathan Navarro Griffin and Eelke Folmer. 2019. Out-of-Body Locomotion: Vectionless Navigation with a Continuous Avatar Representation. In Proc. VRST ’19 (Parramatta, NSW, Australia). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 1, 8 pages.

Digital Library

[17]

Emilie Guy, Parinya Punpongsanon, Daisuke Iwai, Kosuke Sato, and Tamy Boubekeur. 2015. LazyNav: 3D ground navigation with non-critical body parts. In Proc. IEEE 3DUI 2015. IEEE, New York, NY, USA, 43–50.

[18]

Carrie Heeter. 1992. Being There: The Subjective Experience of Presence. Presence: Teleoper. Virtual Environ. 1, 2 (May 1992), 262–271.

[19]

Thang Hoang, Thuc Nguyen, Chuyen Luong, Son Do, and Deokjai Choi. 2013. Adaptive cross-device gait recognition using a mobile accelerometer. Journal of Information Processing Systems 9, 2 (2013), 333–348.

[20]

Julian Horsey. 2021. SlimeVR full 360 degree virtual reality body tracker. https://github.com/SlimeVR/SlimeVR-OpenVR-Driver

[21]

HTC. 2020. HTC SteamVR Base Station 2 About Page. https://www.vive.com/eu/support/vive-pro/category_howto/about-the-base-stations.html

[22]

HTC. 2020. HTC Vive Pro Official Product Page. https://www.vive.com/eu/product/vive-pro/

[23]

HTC. 2021. HTC Vive Tracker Official Product Page.

[24]

Infinadeck. 2021. The Only True Omnidirectional Treadmill | Infinadeck. https://www.infinadeck.com/

[25]

Susan A Jackson and Herbert W Marsh. 1996. Development and validation of a scale to measure optimal experience: The Flow State Scale. Journal of sport and exercise psychology 18, 1 (1996), 17–35.

[26]

Keller. 2017. ElectricNightOwl ArmSwinger Locomotion Library. https://github.com/ElectricNightOwl/ArmSwinger

[27]

Robert S. Kennedy, Norman E. Lane, Kevin S. Berbaum, and Michael G. Lilienthal. 1993. Simulator Sickness Questionnaire: An Enhanced Method for Quantifying Simulator Sickness. The International Journal of Aviation Psychology (1993).

[28]

Hyun K. Kim, Jaehyun Park, Yeongcheol Choi, and Mungyeong Choe. 2018. Virtual reality sickness questionnaire (VRSQ): Motion sickness measurement index in a virtual reality environment. Applied Ergonomics (2018).

[29]

Woojoo Kim and Shuping Xiong. 2021. User-defined walking-in-place gestures for VR locomotion. International Journal of Human Computer Studies 152, December 2020(2021), 102648.

[30]

Julian Kreimeier, Daniela Ullmann, Harald Kipke, and Timo Götzelmann. 2020. Initial Evaluation of Different Types of Virtual Reality Locomotion Towards a Pedestrian Simulator for Urban and Transportation Planning. In Proc. CHI EA ’20(Honolulu, HI, USA). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1–6.

Digital Library

[31]

Juyoung Lee, Sang Ahn, and Jae-In Hwang. 2018. A walking-in-place method for virtual reality using position and orientation tracking. Sensors 18, 9 (2018), 2832.

[32]

Gerard Llorach, Alun Evans, and Josep Blat. 2014. Simulator Sickness and Presence Using HMDs: Comparing Use of a Game Controller and a Position Estimation System. In Proc. VRST ’14. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 137–140.

Digital Library

[33]

Denys J. C. Matthies, Felix M. Manke, Franz Müller, Charalampia Makri, Christoph Anthes, and Dieter Kranzlmüller. 2014. VR-Stepper: A Do-It-Yourself Game Interface For Locomotion In Virtual Environments. (2014). arxiv:1407.3948

[34]

Morgan McCullough, Hong Xu, Joel Michelson, Matthew Jackoski, Wyatt Pease, William Cobb, William Kalescky, Joshua Ladd, and Betsy Williams. 2015. Myo arm: swinging to explore a VE. In Proc. SIGGRAPH Symposium on Applied Perception ’15. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 107–113.

Digital Library

[35]

Nora McDonald, Sarita Schoenebeck, and Andrea Forte. 2019. Reliability and inter-rater reliability in qualitative research: Norms and guidelines for CSCW and HCI practice. In Proc. ACM on Hum.-Comp. Interact. ’19, Vol. 3. ACM, New York, NY, USA.

Digital Library

[36]

Mary L McHugh. 2012. Interrater reliability: the kappa statistic. Biochemia medica 22, 3 (2012), 276–282.

[37]

Adrian K T Ng, Leith K Y Chan, and Henry Y K Lau. 2020. A study of cybersickness and sensory conflict theory using a motion-coupled virtual reality system. Displays 61(2020), 101922.

[38]

N C Nilsson, S Serafin, M H Laursen, K S Pedersen, E Sikström, and R Nordahl. 2013. Tapping-In-Place: Increasing the naturalness of immersive walking-in-place locomotion through novel gestural input. In IEEE 3DUI 2013. IEEE Comput. Soc, New Jersey, United States, 31–38.

[39]

Yun Suen Pai and Kai Kunze. 2017. Armswing: Using Arm Swings for Accessible and Immersive Navigation in AR/VR Spaces. In Proc. MUM ’17. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 189–198.

Digital Library

[40]

Jaeheung Park. 2008. Synthesis of natural arm swing motion in human bipedal walking. Journal of Biomechanics 41, 7 (2008), 1417–1426.

[41]

Yi Hao Peng, Carolyn Yu, Shi Hong Liu, Chung Wei Wang, Paul Taele, Neng Hao Yu, and Mike Y. Chen. 2020. WalkingVibe: Reducing Virtual Reality Sickness and Improving Realism while Walking in VR using Unobtrusive Head-mounted Vibrotactile Feedback. In Proc. CHI ’20. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1–12.

Digital Library

[42]

Falko Rheinberg, Regina Vollmeyer, and Stefan Engeser. 2003. Assessment of flow experiences. Diagnostik von Motivation und Selbstkonzept (Tests und Trends – Jahrbuch der pädagogisch-psychologischen Diagnostik - Band 2) (2003), 261–279.

[43]

Thomas W Schubert. 2003. The sense of presence in virtual environments:. Zeitschrift für Medienpsychologie 15, 2 (2003), 69–71.

[44]

Mel Slater, Anthony Steed, and Martin Usoh. 1995. The Virtual Treadmill: A Naturalistic Metaphor for Navigation in Immersive Virtual Environments. In Proc. Virtual Environments ’95, Martin Göbel (Ed.). Springer Vienna, Vienna, 135–148.

[45]

Mel Slater, Martin Usoh, and Anthony Steed. 1995. Taking Steps: The Influence of a Walking Technique on Presence in Virtual Reality. ACM TOCHI 2, 3 (Sep 1995), 201–219.

Digital Library

[46]

SpaceWalkerVR. 2021. Home - SpaceWalkerVR. http://www.spacewalkervr.com/

[47]

Fangmin Sun, Chenfei Mao, Xiaomao Fan, and Ye Li. 2019. Accelerometer-Based Speed-Adaptive Gait Authentication Method for Wearable IoT Devices. IEEE Internet of Things Journal 6, 1 (2019), 820–830.

[48]

James N Templeman, Patricia S Denbrook, and Linda E Sibert. 1999. Virtual Locomotion: Walking in Place through Virtual Environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 8, 6(1999), 598–617.

Digital Library

[49]

James N. Templeman, Patricia S. Denbrook, and Linda E. Sibert. 1999. Virtual locomotion: Walking in place through virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 8, 6(1999), 598–617.

Digital Library

[50]

Sam Tregillus and Eelke Folmer. 2016. VR-STEP: Walking-in-Place Using Inertial Sensing for Hands Free Navigation in Mobile VR Environments. In Proc. CHI ’16. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1250–1255.

Digital Library

[51]

Unity. 2020. Unity Official Page. https://unity.com/

[52]

Valve Corporation. 2021. SteamVR Official Page. https://store.steampowered.com/steamvr

[53]

Virtuix. 2021. Omni by Virtuix - The leading and most popular VR motion platform. https://www.virtuix.com/

[54]

Julius von Willich, Martin Schmitz, Florian Müller, Daniel Schmitt, and Max Mühlhäuser. 2020. Podoportation: Foot-Based Locomotion in Virtual Reality. In Proc. CHI ’20. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1–14.

Digital Library

[55]

KAT VR. 2021. KAT VR Official Site - Virtual Reality Locomotion Technologies – KAT VR. https://www.kat-vr.com/

[56]

Jeremy D. Wendt, Mary C. Whitton, and Frederick P. Brooks. 2010. GUD WIP: Gait-understanding-driven walking-in-place. In Proc. IEEE VR 2010. IEEE, New York, NY, USA, 51–58.

Digital Library

[57]

Katie Wickens. 2021. Swedish teen’s start-up brings us the most affordable VR full-body tracking ever. https://www.pcgamer.com/swedish-teens-start-up-brings-us-the-most-affordable-vr-full-body-tracking-ever/

[58]

Preston Tunnell Wilson, William Kalescky, Ansel MacLaughlin, and Betsy Williams. 2016. VR Locomotion: Walking>Walking in Place>Arm swinging. In Proc. VRCAI 2016. ACM, New York, NY, USA.

Digital Library

[59]

Preston Tunnell Wilson, Kevin Nguyen, Alyssa Harris, and Betsy Williams. 2014. Walking in place using the Microsoft Kinect to explore a large VE. In Proc. VRCAI 2014. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 27–33.

Digital Library

Cited By

Lee S(2024)Implementation and Evaluation of a Low-Cost Virtual Reality Environment User Interface Using MakeyMakeyJournal of Digital Contents Society10.9728/dcs.2024.25.3.66725:3(667-673)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.9728/dcs.2024.25.3.667
Shin RChoi BChoi SLee S(2024)Implementation and Evaluation of Walk-in-Place Using a Low-Cost Motion-Capture Device for Virtual Reality ApplicationsSensors10.3390/s2409284824:9(2848)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/s24092848
Yeo AKwok BJoshna AChen KLee J(2024)Entering the Next Dimension: A Review of 3D User Interfaces for Virtual RealityElectronics10.3390/electronics1303060013:3(600)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13030600
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Understanding User Experiences Across VR Walking-in-place Locomotion Methods
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Virtual reality

Recommendations

VR-Fit: Walking-in-Place Locomotion with Real Time Step Detection for VR-Enabled Exercise
Mobile Web and Intelligent Information Systems
Abstract
With recent advances in mobile and wearable technologies, virtual reality (VR) found many applications in daily use. Today, a mobile device can be converted into a low-cost immersive VR kit thanks to the availability of do-it-yourself viewers in ...
Walking by Cycling: A Novel In-Place Locomotion User Interface for Seated Virtual Reality Experiences
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We introduce VR Strider, a novel locomotion user interface (LUI) for seated virtual reality (VR) experiences, which maps cycling biomechanics of the user's legs to virtual walking movements. The core idea is to translate the motion of pedaling on a mini ...
Walk or Teleport? The Impact of VR Users' Locomotion Technique in Asymmetric VR-MR Setup
NordiCHI '24 Adjunct: Adjunct Proceedings of the 2024 Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

Although locomotion within virtual reality (VR) is an integral environment navigation aspect, its impact is under-explored in asymmetric VR setups that support VR features along with mixed reality (MR) ones. In order to understand users’ needs in ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2022

10459 pages

ISBN:9781450391573

DOI:10.1145/3491102

Editors:
Simone Barbosa
PUC-Rio, Brazil
,
Cliff Lampe
University of Michigan, USA
,
Caroline Appert
Université Paris-Saclay, France
,
David A. Shamma
Toyota Research Institute, USA
,
Steven Drucker
Microsoft Research, USA
,
Julie Williamson
University of Glasgow, UK
,
Koji Yatani
University of Tokyo, Japan

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 29 April 2022

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Funding Sources

Land Transport Authority - Singapore

Conference

CHI '22

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 29 - May 5, 2022

LA, New Orleans, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

CHI '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

10
Total Citations
View Citations
1,005
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)350
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)43

Reflects downloads up to 26 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Lee S(2024)Implementation and Evaluation of a Low-Cost Virtual Reality Environment User Interface Using MakeyMakeyJournal of Digital Contents Society10.9728/dcs.2024.25.3.66725:3(667-673)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.9728/dcs.2024.25.3.667
Shin RChoi BChoi SLee S(2024)Implementation and Evaluation of Walk-in-Place Using a Low-Cost Motion-Capture Device for Virtual Reality ApplicationsSensors10.3390/s2409284824:9(2848)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/s24092848
Yeo AKwok BJoshna AChen KLee J(2024)Entering the Next Dimension: A Review of 3D User Interfaces for Virtual RealityElectronics10.3390/electronics1303060013:3(600)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13030600
Snow SKhan ADay KMatthews B(2024)Household Wattch: Exploring Opportunities for Surveillance and Consent through Families’ Household Energy Use DataACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/367322831:4(1-30)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673228
Chidziwisano GCummings APotnis DJalakasi M(2024)Understanding Urban Women's Interaction with Domestic Technologies in Malawi: Advancing Feminist Theories in HCIACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36502042:2(1-25)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3650204
Chan LMi THsueh ZHuang YHsu M(2024)Seated-WIP: Enabling Walking-in-Place Locomotion for Stationary Chairs in Confined SpacesProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642395(1-13)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642395
Sin ZJia YLi RLeong HLi QNg P(2024)illumotion: An Optical-illusion-based VR Locomotion Technique for Long-Distance 3D Movement2024 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR58804.2024.00111(924-934)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VR58804.2024.00111
Anderton CCreed CSarcar STheil A(2024)From Teleportation to Climbing: A Review of Locomotion Techniques in the Most Used Commercial Virtual Reality ApplicationsInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2372151(1-21)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2024.2372151
McAmis RKohno TCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)The writing on the wall and 3D digital twinsProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620359(2169-2186)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620359
Hedlund MLundström ABogdan CMatviienko A(2023)Jogging-in-Place: Exploring Body-Steering Methods for Jogging in Virtual EnvironmentsProceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3626705.3627778(377-385)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626705.3627778

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents