WIM: Fast Locomotion in Virtual Reality with Spatial Orientation Gain & without Motion Sickness

For locomotion in Virtual Reality (VR), different approaches exist. While continuously moving across the ground through walking techniques or controller input is considered to be most similar compared to the way we move through physical space, this technique causes motion sickness and results in lack of spatial orientation. Teleportation has been shown to result in less motion sickness, while being slower than moving continuously in most virtual environments. World-in-miniature (WIM) allows the user for changing his/her viewpoint through picking and relocating his/her representing icon in a virtual miniature replica of the VR he/she is located in. To see if WIM may be an alternative locomotion technique to continuous motion, we compared the three locomotion techniques contentious motion, teleportation and, WIM (see Fig. 1). We found that WIM outperforms the other two techniques in navigation time for longer distances. Furthermore, it provides best spatial knowledge while causing least motion sickness among the compared methods. We conclude with proposing to provide VR users with a set of locomotion techniques that allows for continuous motion when only moving little, while WIM could be used for moving over longer distances and in environments that are difficult to oversee.