A Universal Virtual Locomotion System: Supporting Generic Redirected Walking and Dynamic Passive Haptics within Legacy 3D Graphics Applications

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a virtual locomotion system that allows navigation within any large-scale virtual environment (VE) by real walking. In contrast to the work of Razzaque et al. (2001) we have developed generic redirected walking concepts by combining motion compression, i. e., scaling the real distance users walk, rotation gains, which make the real turns smaller or larger, and curvature gains, which bend the user's walking direction such that s/he walks on a curve. Furthermore, we introduce the new concept of dynamic passive haptics which extends passive haptics (Insko et al., 2001; Kohli et al., 2005) in such a way that any number of virtual objects can be sensed by means of real proxy objects having similar haptic capabilities, i. e., size, shape and surface structure. We have evaluated these concepts and explain technical details regarding their integration into legacy 3D graphics applications.