Steportation: An Effective Walking-based Locomotion Method for VR

The virtual space can often be infinite, but the user's space is always constrained. In order to mitigate the limitations of a constrained physical space to explore an infinite virtual environment, many artificial locomotion techniques have been proposed. One of the most commonly used locomotion techniques is teleportation, which allows users to explore the entire virtual environment without moving. However, this method is unnatural and can lead to spatial disorientation, lack of motion perception and sense of presence. Subsequent studies have also proposed improvements to enhance immersion of the teleportation, but the perception of motion is still distinct from that of real walking. In this paper, we introduce our method called “Steportation”, which combines natural direct walking and walking-based teleportation. The key is that users are able to trigger teleportation like natural walking and implicitly switch between teleportation and natural walking using the ‘Teleport Circle’ mechanism, eliminating the need for hand controllers. We compare our method with conventional controller-pointing teleportation, gaze teleportation and jumping teleportation, and evaluate these methods in terms of efficiency, accuracy, ease of use, and immersion through a series of experiments. The experimental results show that our method improves sense of presence and immersion while maintaining efficiency and usability.