An Experimental System to Measure Accuracy of Rotation Gain Under Different Conditions in Virtual Reality Systems

One of the most common tasks performed in VR is navigation through a virtual environment. Real walking, which allows the user to physically move through a physical tracking space as they navigate in a virtual environment, is one of the most natural navigation methods available for VR. However, while virtual worlds can take up vast amounts of space, the physical space the user can walk in is limited. Redirected walking seeks to alleviate this limitation by letting the user walk in a virtual environment that is larger than the physical tracking space available by decoupling the mapping of the user’s real and virtual movements.In this paper, we describe an experiment system that evaluates peoples’ ability to accurately turn at different levels of rotation gain. We further report on a commissioning experiment that tests the functioning of this research system. Specifically, we asked participants to rotate in two virtual environments, a minimal scene and a visually complex scene, with different levels of induced gain and repeat this task, as a control in the physical world, with their eyes open and then closed. It was found that participants rotated less at higher gain levels, especially in the complex scene.