5 ms·

The most interesting thing here for me is the use of redirected walking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirect

by gfaure 6y ago

The most interesting thing here for me is the use of redirected walking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking). I saw the video accompanying the paper but this would be the first game I've seen try to use it.

gwillen 6y ago
I will be very curious what the minimum area requirement for the game is. I can't imagine redirected walking being very convincing in the Quest's minimum 6.5 x 6.5 ft square.
- trsohmers 6y ago
  I've played around in Tea For God (https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under-development https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under-development) which does this on the quest, and it works really well, and I didn't even use the full 6.5'x6.5' (in my case ~6'x4') possible. Within a minute I lost all sense of where I was in the real world.
  - jmiskovic 6y ago
    Tea For God does not use redirected walking. It procedurally adopts game space to available room space, and uses clever mechanisms like non-euclidian geometry and various elevators to allow for huge worlds. Still, movement is 1:1 mapped between room and game. Redirected walking means distorting the mapping when moving or rotating, to fit any game world into limited playing space. In research it's always applied in larger spaces, x5 times bigger than living rooms. If you distort moving or turning too much, users lose balance or become nauseous. Here's a decent intro paper. 15 Years of Research on Redirected Walking in Immersive Virtual Environments https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf
- polycaster 6y ago
  (2m × 2m if you're curious)
- rspicer 6y ago
  I agree that 6.5ft^2 is probably too small for a good RDW experience based on the gain numbers I'm familiar with. The tracked volumes of the experiments I was a part of were all on the scale of ~15-20 ft square. (I'm not a researcher, really, but I was a developer at a lab that did some RDW research -- for instance, https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2931002.2931018 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2931002.2931018). There are some tricks that the literature suggests could help (forcing the user to turn >360 degrees in place, exploiting change blindness to get people to accept non-euclidean spaces, etc) but I believe it's not controversial to assert that the user is going to realize they're not walking straight if someone tries to get them to walk a circle with radius ~3ft with traditional RDW cues!
  - drcode 6y ago
    I'm the lead dev on Walking Dream: No doubt the player will "notice" they are being redirected in a small space, the question is if it's bad enough to induce nausea. Our goal is to be able to tell the player "you can just walk wherever you want in the game, but you'll notice some weird rotational shifting, however you won't get nausea". It's a lower bar that can still lead to fun gameplay.
- drcode 6y ago
  Hi, I'm the lead dev on walking dream. It's hard to say right now what the "minimum area requirement" is, because there's an inverse correlation between area size and nausea (since more "redirecting" is needed in smaller spaces) However, I think it works pretty well in 9x9ft so far (but we need to see how it works for other testers)
Agentlien 6y ago
I'm really curious to try this. It's interesting how we tend to veer off course when trying to walk straight, and cool to see an idea of how to exploit it. I used to do gymnastics and as part of that I trained doing long series of cartwheels along a marked line. I managed to get good at doing it without deviating from that line. I looked straight ahead and it went fast enough that everything was a blur. However, I still couldn't do it with my eyes closed.
TheRealSteel 6y ago
I look forward to trying this. Improving locomotion in VR would be great. But I feel we may be overthinking it. I believe simply tracking leg movement and having the player jog on the spot is the solution. Having simulated this myself by holding forward on the controller while jogging on the spot, I believe it's the way forward. If you have a headset, give it a try. I admit walking doesn't feel very natural, but jogging works well. Of course, games don't have this option with most popular current hardware (but foot trackers and whole body trackers do exist). It would be tricky to blend/differentiate movement and jogging, but I think it's doable. I predict that future headsets will do inside-out tracking of your entire body, including the legs (they made need a flip out camera to be far enough out from the body to do this). They've already put out a software update for the Quest that does surprisingly good controller-free hand tracking. There was also a comment on HN a few weeks ago (I'll try to find it) where someone implemented this system and said it worked well.
- andybak 6y ago
  > Of course, games don't have this option with most popular current hardware There's a great low tech solution - pair your mobile phone and leave it in your pocket. The accelerometer data is more than good enough to detect jogging. There was an app for Steam VR that did this and I recall it worked quite well. EDIT: here: http://pocketstrafe.com/ http://pocketstrafe.com/
- evilturnip 6y ago
  treadmill solutions seems to be the way the industry is going. The Kat Walk C is a kickstarter project that actually works pretty well, and relatively small: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqchs9xMLCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqchs9xMLCw
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
drcode 6y ago
Hi, I'm the lead on walking dream. There have been a couple of other games I've seen that have implemented version of this, though using very different approaches. However, most were closer to tech demos, without a full game experience.

by gfaure 6y ago

gwillen 6y ago

I will be very curious what the minimum area requirement for the game is. I can't imagine redirected walking being very convincing in the Quest's minimum 6.5 x 6.5 ft square.

trsohmers 6y ago
I've played around in Tea For God (https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under-development https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under-development) which does this on the quest, and it works really well, and I didn't even use the full 6.5'x6.5' (in my case ~6'x4') possible. Within a minute I lost all sense of where I was in the real world.
- jmiskovic 6y ago
  Tea For God does not use redirected walking. It procedurally adopts game space to available room space, and uses clever mechanisms like non-euclidian geometry and various elevators to allow for huge worlds. Still, movement is 1:1 mapped between room and game. Redirected walking means distorting the mapping when moving or rotating, to fit any game world into limited playing space. In research it's always applied in larger spaces, x5 times bigger than living rooms. If you distort moving or turning too much, users lose balance or become nauseous. Here's a decent intro paper. 15 Years of Research on Redirected Walking in Immersive Virtual Environments https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf
polycaster 6y ago
(2m × 2m if you're curious)
rspicer 6y ago
I agree that 6.5ft^2 is probably too small for a good RDW experience based on the gain numbers I'm familiar with. The tracked volumes of the experiments I was a part of were all on the scale of ~15-20 ft square. (I'm not a researcher, really, but I was a developer at a lab that did some RDW research -- for instance, https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2931002.2931018 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2931002.2931018). There are some tricks that the literature suggests could help (forcing the user to turn >360 degrees in place, exploiting change blindness to get people to accept non-euclidean spaces, etc) but I believe it's not controversial to assert that the user is going to realize they're not walking straight if someone tries to get them to walk a circle with radius ~3ft with traditional RDW cues!
- drcode 6y ago
  I'm the lead dev on Walking Dream: No doubt the player will "notice" they are being redirected in a small space, the question is if it's bad enough to induce nausea. Our goal is to be able to tell the player "you can just walk wherever you want in the game, but you'll notice some weird rotational shifting, however you won't get nausea". It's a lower bar that can still lead to fun gameplay.
drcode 6y ago
Hi, I'm the lead dev on walking dream. It's hard to say right now what the "minimum area requirement" is, because there's an inverse correlation between area size and nausea (since more "redirecting" is needed in smaller spaces) However, I think it works pretty well in 9x9ft so far (but we need to see how it works for other testers)

Agentlien 6y ago

I'm really curious to try this. It's interesting how we tend to veer off course when trying to walk straight, and cool to see an idea of how to exploit it. I used to do gymnastics and as part of that I trained doing long series of cartwheels along a marked line. I managed to get good at doing it without deviating from that line. I looked straight ahead and it went fast enough that everything was a blur. However, I still couldn't do it with my eyes closed.

TheRealSteel 6y ago

I look forward to trying this. Improving locomotion in VR would be great. But I feel we may be overthinking it. I believe simply tracking leg movement and having the player jog on the spot is the solution. Having simulated this myself by holding forward on the controller while jogging on the spot, I believe it's the way forward. If you have a headset, give it a try. I admit walking doesn't feel very natural, but jogging works well. Of course, games don't have this option with most popular current hardware (but foot trackers and whole body trackers do exist). It would be tricky to blend/differentiate movement and jogging, but I think it's doable. I predict that future headsets will do inside-out tracking of your entire body, including the legs (they made need a flip out camera to be far enough out from the body to do this). They've already put out a software update for the Quest that does surprisingly good controller-free hand tracking. There was also a comment on HN a few weeks ago (I'll try to find it) where someone implemented this system and said it worked well.

andybak 6y ago
> Of course, games don't have this option with most popular current hardware There's a great low tech solution - pair your mobile phone and leave it in your pocket. The accelerometer data is more than good enough to detect jogging. There was an app for Steam VR that did this and I recall it worked quite well. EDIT: here: http://pocketstrafe.com/ http://pocketstrafe.com/
evilturnip 6y ago
treadmill solutions seems to be the way the industry is going. The Kat Walk C is a kickstarter project that actually works pretty well, and relatively small: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqchs9xMLCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqchs9xMLCw

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

drcode 6y ago

Hi, I'm the lead on walking dream. There have been a couple of other games I've seen that have implemented version of this, though using very different approaches. However, most were closer to tech demos, without a full game experience.