User Defined Walking-in-place Gestures for Intuitive Locomotion in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Locomotion is one of the fundamental interactions in virtual reality (VR). As a simple yet naturalistic way to enable VR locomotion, walking-in-place (WIP) techniques have been actively developed. Even though various WIP gestures have been proposed, they were adopted or designed from the perspective of developers, not the users. This limits the benefits of WIP as unnatural gestures may result in a higher cognitive load to learn and memorize, worse presence, and increased sensory conflict. Therefore, this study elicited natural WIP gestures for forward, sideways, and backward walking directions from users. Twenty participants experienced the movement while wearing the VR headset and elicited the WIP gesture for 8 walking directions. The grouping results showed that Turn body + Stepping-in-place (SIP) and Step one foot + SIP/Rock/Stay were four promising WIP gesture sets for VR locomotion. A comparison between elicited and existing gestures revealed that elicited gestures have the potential to outperform existing gestures due to easier to perform, less fatigue, and higher presence. The generated WIP gesture sets could be used in gesture-based VR applications to provide a better user experience and greater movement options in VR locomotion.