Improving spatial orientation in virtual reality with leaning-based interfaces

Advancement in technology has made Virtual Reality (VR) increasingly portable, affordable and accessible to a broad audience. However, large scale VR locomotion still faces major challenges in the form of spatial disorientation and motion sickness. While spatial updating is automatic and even obligatory in real world walking, using VR controllers to travel can cause disorientation. This dissertation presents two experiments that explore ways of improving spatial updating and spatial orientation in VR locomotion while minimizing cybersickness. In the first study, we compared a hand-held controller with HeadJoystick, a leaning-based interface, in a 3D navigational search task. The results showed that leaning-based interface helped participant spatially update more effectively than when using the controller. In the second study, we designed a "HyperJump" locomotion paradigm which allows to travel faster while limiting its optical flow. Not having any optical flow (as in traditional teleport paradigms) has been shown to help reduce cybersickness, but can also cause disorientation. By interlacing continuous locomotion with teleportation we showed that user can travel faster without compromising spatial updating.