On the Use of Jumping Gestures for Immersive Teleportation in VR

Abstract

Virtual environments can be infinitely large, but users only have a limited amount of space in the physical world. One way to navigate within large virtual environments is through teleportation. Teleportation requires two steps: targeting a place and sudden shifting. Conventional teleportation uses a controller to point to a target position and a button press or release to immediately teleport the user to the position. Since the teleportation does not require physical movement, the user can explore the entire virtual environment. However, as this is supernatural and can lead to momentary disorientation, it can break the sense of presence, and thus degrade the overall virtual reality experience. To compensate for the downside of this technique, we explore the effects of a jumping gesture as a teleportation trigger. We conducted a study with two factors: 1) triggering method (Jumping and Standing), and 2) targeting method (Head-direction and Controller). We found that the conventional way of using a controller while standing showed better efficiency, the highest usability and lower cybersickness. Nevertheless, Jumping+ Controller invoked a high sense of engagement and fun, and therefore provides an interesting new technique, especially for VR games.