Comparative Effectiveness of an Omnidirectional Treadmill versus Natural Walking for Navigating in Virtual Environments

Omnidirectional treadmills provide one solution for locomoting through large virtual environments in confined physical spaces. Through two experiments, this paper evaluated locomotion on an omnidirectional treadmill (Cyberith Virtualizer Elite 2) by comparing it to natural walking in an open physical space. In Experiment 1, participants judged distances and completed a path integration task using the treadmill and natural walking. Participants walked further on the treadmill but had larger angular errors during path integration, potentially due to increased cybersickness. Experiment 2 varied path lengths during path integration and found that longer paths led to higher cybersickness scores but did not affect performance. The paper offers interpretations and suggestions for using omnidirectional treadmills in virtual reality.