Locomotion

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Locomotion are ways to move through the virtual worlds of VR.

Contents

Locomotion Methods

See also: Locomotion Methods

Method	Type	Required Devices	Description	Pros	Cons	Creator	Examples
ArmSwinger	Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	Players move by swinging their arms as if they are running but do not move their legs.	Works in most types of games and experiences More immersive than teleportation	Cannot use weapons or perform actions with hands while moving.	Http://electricnightowl.com/
Astral body	Seated Standing Room-scale	None	First person when you need to interact with the environment, Third person when you need to run around in the environment	Easy to navigate and interact Clean	Immersion breaking for some	???	Https://store.steampowered.com/app/751300/Alice Mystery Garden/ Alice Mystery Garden
Blink	Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	Builds upon Teleportation to create 3 more types of movement techniques called Cinematic Blink, Precision Blink and Volume Blink	Reduce simulator sickness Allows for the scaling of play space sizes	???	Cloudhead Games	The Gallery - Episode 1: Call of the Starseed
Bobbing-Walking	Standing Room-scale	Head-mounted display	Bob or shake the HMD to move, you'll need to run or bounce in place to activate the mechanism,	???	???	Http://cubic9.com/ cubic9
Charge Float Jump	Standing Room-scale Seated	Input Devices	The longer you hold the jump button, the higher you will rise in the VR space.			Crytek
Climbing	Seated Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	Players climb up walls, mounts and other objects by swinging their hands and pulling triggers to grab.	No VR sickness	Can pretty much only travel vertically		Climbey The Climb
Cloudstep	Seated	Gamepad	Using the analog stick from a gamepad, players will move in that direction in discreet steps, similar to miniature teleportations. This method removes all vection, hence eliminating simulator sickness with first person locomotion.	Reduces simulator sickness and improve player comfort	???	IrisVR VR Bits	Technolust
Cockpit / Vehicle	Seated Standing Room-scale	None	Have a cockpit around the player prevents VR sickness, it allows most players feel they are within a stable environment	Reduces VR sickness	Only applicable in certain situations such as Driving, Spacecraft and Mech games.	???	Elite Dangerous Gunjack EVE: Valkyrie
Environmental Redirection	Room-scale	None	Design the game in a way to allow the player to move in circles in the play area. Players will never hit physical walls of the play area.	No artificial locomotion or teleport No VR sickness	Requires meticulous game design, large play area requirement	Triangular Pixels	Unseen Diplomacy
Flight	Seated Standing Room-scale	None	Fly through the air with gaze as directional input.	???	???	Eagle Flight	Eagle Flight
Focal Point VR	Seated Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	To move small distances, Grip and drag the environment. To move large distances, place 2 focal points on the ground with the controllers then rotate, scale, and translate the world.	No VR sickness	???	Albert Hwang
Freedom Locomotion System	Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	Collection of various standing and room-scale locomotion solutions with CAOTS as its fundation.			Https://hugerobotvr.com/ HUGE ROBOT
HMD Position Acceleration	Seated Standing Room-scale	None	Initiating movement by looking in the direction you want to go. You tilt your head forward, you move forward. Tilt your head backwards, and you go backwards.			Crytek
Hallway	Room-scale	None	Player walks down a long hallway that rotates slightly with each step, forcing the player to turn to the right and leading them to walk in circles around the play area.	???	May cause simulator sickness	/u/qwv4851
Handwalking	Room-scale Standing Seated	HTC Vive Motion Controller	…a Virtual Reality experience which takes places in planetary dream worlds. You explore artistically designed planets with a completely new concept, defining and navigating your avatar in a distinctive way, using hand motion controllers.	Reduced till no VR sickness. Easy to handle. Intuitive. Feels rewarding. Gliding possible.	Can only be applied to special movement concepts.	Nico Uthe	Lucid Trips
Holosphere	Seated Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	Whenever you move or rotate, a geodesic sphere appears around your entire view point and blurs everything else in the environment. The geodesic sphere disappears when you stop moving or rotating.	No nausea	Geodesic sphere appears when moving / rotating	Tomáš "Frooxius" Mariančík	Neos: The Origin
Immersive Movement	Standing Room-scale Running-in-place	Motion-tracked controllers	Hold a button on one of the controllers then run in place to move in VR.	Can use one of the hands to interact with environment while moving	???	Https://highsight.itch.io
Lean-To-Move	Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	Press a trigger on controller to record your origin, lean beyond the boundary threshold to move in game, return to origin to stop	Mitigates VR sickness Frees up the hands while moving Move for longer without being fatigued	Can drift from center of play area, difficult to turn	Https://github.com/Erupac/LeanToMove
Ninja Run VR	Seated Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers in both hands	Stretch both arms in the opposite direction of your desired movement while lean in the same direction of desired movement	No nausea or motion sickness	Takes time to travel, can be tiring over long distances	Sean Hall	Shaolinja
Omnidirectional elevator	Room-scale	None	An elevator that can go in All directions	Fun Simple Not exhausting	Picky people will claim it makes them feel sick, Players are locked to their elevator.	???	???
PocketStrafe	Standing Room-scale Running-in-place	Smartphone	Run PocketStrafe app on the smartphone, place the smartphone in your pocket, run in place to move.	Unlike other running-in-place locomotion methods PocketStrafe frees up the hands and the controllers.	Requires smartphone	Http://www.coolfont.co/ Cool Font
Pull	Seated Standing Room-scale	Input Devices	Pulling the environment around you with your hands.	Makes you feel a bit like superman.	Feels super awkward, does not work well in multiplayer.	???	???
RIPmotion	Standing Room-scale Running-in-place	Motion-tracked controllers	Put hands at your hips, press a button on each controller and run in place to move	Proprioceptive and vestibular engagement Immersion Decouples head and body movement Fitness VR sickness reduction	Cannot interact with object with hands while moving,	Http://smirkingcat.software/ripmotion/ Ryan Sullivan
Real world space	Room-scale	None	Users move in real world spaces.	Very realistic and immersive	Cannot function with large movements, Spaces are often limiting, spaces have to be designed for physical movement	???	???
Room-scale vehicle	Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	Entire play space becomes the inside of the vehicle, operate the controls in the vehicle to move the vehicle	???	???	Hover Junkers	Hover Junkers IronWolf VR
Shoot'n'Pull	Room-scale Standing	HTC Vive Motion Controller	Tower Tag offers an intuitive method of movement which gives the game a very dynamic gaming experience without the risk to cause motion sickness. Despite the relatively small space requirements.	No VR sickness. Easy to handle. Intuitive. Feels rewarding.	Fits only to one movement concept.	VR-Nerds GmbH	Tower Tag
Skier	Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	Moving the controllers backwards and below your waist causes the skier to propel himself forward.	???	???	/u/qwv4851
Snap N'Motion	Room-scale	None	When the player is about to hit a wall in real life, the character in VR instantly turns 180 degrees (face backwards). It forces the player to turn around in real life in order to move forward again.	Room-scale VR experience with limited physical space.	Constantly changing directions can be disorientating and unnatural.	RetroPlayGamerTV	???
Swimming	Standing Room-scale Seated	Motion-tracked controllers	Hold the triggers on the controllers then stroke or peddle to move.	???	Only used for water and underwater environments.	???	Ocean Rift
Teleportation	Seated Standing Room-scale	None	Look or point in the direction you want to go and click a button to warp.	Intuitive Understandable Simple No VR sickness	Immersion breaking, Exhausting, confusing in move from point A-B puzzle games.	???	Budget Cuts Vanishing Realms The Lab
Third-person	Seated Standing Room-scale	Gamepad	Player's POV trails comfortably behind their character, works for third-person games with gamepads	Very easy to implement No need for motion-tracked controllers	Less immersive, can cause VR sickness		Lucky's Tale
Tunneling	Seated Standing	Gamepad	The face-locked viewport ("tunnel") displays continuous motion and allows the user to steer the player like an FPS-style game. The peripheral view remains at the point of origin, so there is no controller-induced vection in the periphery.	Reduces VR sickness when moving with controller / gamepad	???	???	???
WalkAbout	Room-scale	Motion-tracked controllers	After reaching edge of playable space', virtual world is blurred and grid appears. Virtual world shifts to encompass open play area, forcing player to turn and face it. At this point the virtual world comes back into focus and grid disappears.	???	???	Tekton Games	The Dark Within
World Rotation	Seated Standing Room-scale	Motion-tracked Controllers	You pull a trigger, then move the controller left or right to rotate the world.			Crytek
World Rotator	Room-scale	None	Moving to the edge of the play area causes time to freeze and locks the world to the player's rotation. A HUD appears and shows the amount of open space in front of the player.	???	???	/u/qwv4851

Problems and Solutions

Sitting

Standing

Room-scale

Locomotion in virtual reality presents many problems and many opportunities to innovate. Aside from traditional input devices like mouse, keyboard and gamepad, the most obvious method of locomotion is simply walking around within the range of the positional tracking devices. One problem presented by "walking" is the available space of the room. Physical obstacles such as walls and objects will prevent the user from advancing. One solution to this problem is a omni-directional treadmill such as Omni. Another option is to use teleportation or elevators to virtually transport the user to a new environment while keeping the physical space the same.

HTC Vive is the first consumer VR Device to offer a room-scale experience. Oculus Rift CV1 and PlayStation VR emphasize more of a seated experience.

Input Devices

3DRudder, Cyberith Virtualizer, KAT WALK, Omnideck, VRGO, VirZoom, Virtuix Omni