Testbed Evaluation of Multi-Travel Mode in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Most VR applications, regardless of travel distance or complexity of the Virtual Environment, provide only a single locomotion technique for users. Often, travel might require different levels of precision and speed (travel time and effort). Different locomotion techniques will produce different levels of comfort (cybersickness and fatigue) for various distances. A single locomotion technique does not satisfy all the requirements. In this paper, we introduce a Multi- Travel mode that uses different pre-selected locomotion techniques for different travel distances. The Multi-Travel mode uses Teleportation for long-distance travel, Touch-pad navigation for medium- distance travel and TriggerWalking for small- distance travel. Often, virtual environments are explored standing up, which is one of the contributing factors of physical fatigue since it involves high energy expenditure compared to sitting. To evaluate the Multi-Travel mode and pose (sitting and standing), we used LUTE, a standard testbed environment for long-, medium-, and short- distance travel. We tested the user performance, usability, and comfort of the between-subjects effect of travel technique (Multi- Travel mode, Teleportation or Thumb-pad locomotion in isolation) and within-subject effect of pose (seated/standing). While Multi-Travel mode did not outperform the other two locomotion techniques, We found that participants prefer sitting while using Touch-pad navigation and prefer standing while using Teleportation. Cybersickness was significantly higher while using Touch-pad navigation compared to Teleportation. In addition, the standing pose resulted in higher collection scores compared to sitting.