Point & Teleport locomotion technique for virtual reality

With the increasing popularity of virtual reality (VR) and new devices getting available with relatively lower costs, more and more video games have been developed recently. Most of these games use first person interaction techniques since it is more natural for Head Mounted Displays (HMDs). One of the most widely used interaction technique in VR video games is locomotion that is used to move user's viewpoint in virtual environments. Locomotion is an important component of video games since it can have a strong influence on user experience. In this study, a new locomotion technique we called "Point & Teleport" is described and compared with two commonly used VR locomotion techniques of walk-in-place and joystick. In this technique, users simply point where they want to be in virtual world and they are teleported to that position. As a major advantage, it is not expected to introduce motion sickness since it does not involve any visible translational motion. In this study, two VR experiments were designed and performed to analyze the Point & Teleport technique. In the first experiment, Point & Teleport was compared with walkin-place and joystick locomotion techniques. In the second experiment, a direction component was added to the Point & Teleport technique so that the users could specify their desired orientation as well. 16 users took part in both experiments. Results indicated that Point & Teleport is a fun and user friendly locomotion method whereas the additional direction component degraded the user experience.