Room Connection Techniques in Virtual Reality for Walking in Impossible Spaces

This work demonstrates three room-connection techniques – portals, corridors, and central hubs – that can be used in virtual environments to create "impossible spaces". These spaces use overlapping areas to maximize available physical space, enabling walking even in constrained spaces. In this experiment, a user can navigate through a five-room apartment of about 106.25 m<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> by walking within a physical play area of about 6.25 m<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> (2.5 x 2.5 meters). The primary contribution of this work is demonstrating how these room-connection techniques can be applied to dynamically adapt virtual environments to fit small physical spaces, such as those commonly available to VR users at home. A video showcasing this demo can be found at the following link: https://youtu.be/a_4kcC0VOuY.