RedirectedDoors

Room-scale VR is a highly immersive experience where users can freely move around the virtual environment (VE) by actually walking within a play area, which is reported as providing a high sense of presence and spatial recognition. Yet the problem is that exploring large virtual environments is limited by the physical play area. To deal with this, many studies have considered redirection methodologies that imperceptibly manipulate the user’s translational distance or direction in VR by constantly applying a gain while the user is walking. In this study, we propose RedirectedDoors, a novel redirection technique that manipulates the user’s orientation during door-opening motions. A main characteristic of this technique is that the user’s door-opening angle is coupled with the system’s rotational manipulation of the entire VE at a specific ratio (i.e., gain) around the axis of the door hinge. Door opening is a routine daily action possibly compatible with many VR applications. From the results of user study, our technique showed a higher space efficiency of redirection.