Exploring a Safe Zone-Based Locomotion Method with Natural Movement and Adaptive Teleportation for Immersive Environments
Resumo
Virtual Reality (VR) offers immersive experiences, but navigating VR environments often faces a significant hurdle: physical space limitations. Virtual worlds commonly exceed the user’s real-world space, restricting natural movement. Traditional locomotion techniques like teleportation and continuous directional movement are widely used as an alternative. This work presents a locomotion approach that aims to improve navigation in virtual environments considerably larger than the available physical space. It leverages the available physical space for increased real movement and uses teleportation for longer distances. To achieve this, we introduce the concept of S-zones, which are pre-defined safe zones that encompass disjoint sets of interactive elements. This approach encourages and allows users to physically move naturally within these S-zones, reserving teleportation for reaching more distant areas. The goal is to minimize the need for teleportation for nearby interactions, making them more natural and reducing the potential for cybersickness or spatial disorientation caused by unnatural body movement, such as joystick locomotion. Herein, we also report an experiment that we conducted with 20 participants, which gave us the first insights regarding our approach and allowed us to foresee the next steps of our research.
Palavras-chave:
Virtual Reality, Locomotion, Redirect Walking, Zone Teleport
Referências
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Congdon, B. J. and Steed, A. Monte-Carlo redirected walking gain selection through simulated walks. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 29(5):2637–2646, 2023.
Anderton, C. Creed, C. Sarcar, S. and T. A. From teleportation to climbing a review of locomotion techniques in the most used commercial virtual reality applications. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 41(4):1946–1966, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2024.2372151
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Bhandari, J. MacNeilage, P. and Folmer, E. Teleportation without spatial disorientation using optical flow cues. Proceedings of the 44th Graphics Interface Conference (GI ’18), 162–167, 2018. DOI: 10.20380/GI2018.22
Bowman, D. Koller, D. and Hodges, L. Travel in immersive virtual environments an evaluation of viewpoint motion control techniques. Proceedings of IEEE Annual International Symposium on Virtual Reality, 45–52, 1997.
Zhang, Y. Ladeveze, N. Nguyen, H. Fleury, C. and Bourdot, P. Virtual navigation considering user workspace automatic and manual positioning before teleportation. Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST ’20), ACM, 2020. DOI: 10.1145/3385956.3418949
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Steinicke, F. Bruder, G. Kohli, L. Jerald, J. and Hinrichs, K. Taxonomy and implementation of redirection techniques for ubiquitous passive haptic feedback. 2008 International Conference on Cyberworlds, 217–223, 2008.
Slater, M. Body centred interaction in immersive virtual environments. Artificial life and virtual reality. John Wiley and Sons, 1994.
Cruz-Neira, C. Fernandez, M. and Portales, C. Virtual reality and games. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 2(1), 2018. [link]
Cmentowski, S. Krekhov, A. and Kruger, J. Outstanding a multi-perspective travel approach for virtual reality games. Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ’19), ACM, 287–299, 2019. DOI: 10.1145/3311350.3347183
Al Zayer, M. MacNeilage, P. and Folmer, E. Virtual locomotion a survey. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 26(6):2315–2334, 2020.
Ramaseri Chandra, A. N. El Jamiy, F. and Reza, H. A systematic survey on cybersickness in virtual environments. Computers, 11(4), 2022. [link]
Biswas, N. Mukherjee, A. and Bhattacharya, S. Are you feeling sick a systematic literature review of cybersickness in virtual reality. ACM Computing Surveys, 56(11), June 2024. DOI: 10.1145/3670008
Cherni, H. Nicolas, S. and Metayer, N. Using virtual reality treadmill as a locomotion technique in a navigation task impact on user experience case of the katwalk. International Journal of Virtual Reality, 21(1):1–14, 2021.
Fukui, G. Matsumoto, K. Nakamura, T. Narumi, T. and Kuzuoka, H. Effects of wearing knee supports on the detection threshold and applicability of redirected walking. 2025 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), 785–789, 2025.
Ohashi, Y. Matsumoto, K. Hirao, Y. Perusquia-Hernandez, M. Sakata, N. Uchiyama, H. and Kiyokawa, K. Friction sensation in redirected walking using a rotating handrail. 2025 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), 1280–1281, 2025.
Fan, L. Li, H. and Shi, M. Redirected walking for exploring immersive virtual spaces with HMD a comprehensive review and recent advances. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 29(10):4104–4123, 2023.
Congdon, B. J. and Steed, A. Monte-Carlo redirected walking gain selection through simulated walks. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 29(5):2637–2646, 2023.
Anderton, C. Creed, C. Sarcar, S. and T. A. From teleportation to climbing a review of locomotion techniques in the most used commercial virtual reality applications. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 41(4):1946–1966, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2024.2372151
Meta. Locomotion types. [link]
Liu, J. Parekh, H. Al-Zayer, M. and Folmer, E. Increasing walking in VR using redirected teleportation. Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’18), ACM, 521–529, 2018. DOI: 10.1145/3242587.3242601
Bhandari, J. MacNeilage, P. and Folmer, E. Teleportation without spatial disorientation using optical flow cues. Proceedings of the 44th Graphics Interface Conference (GI ’18), 162–167, 2018. DOI: 10.20380/GI2018.22
Bowman, D. Koller, D. and Hodges, L. Travel in immersive virtual environments an evaluation of viewpoint motion control techniques. Proceedings of IEEE Annual International Symposium on Virtual Reality, 45–52, 1997.
Zhang, Y. Ladeveze, N. Nguyen, H. Fleury, C. and Bourdot, P. Virtual navigation considering user workspace automatic and manual positioning before teleportation. Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST ’20), ACM, 2020. DOI: 10.1145/3385956.3418949
Criollo-C, S. Guerrero-Arias, A. Samala, A. D. Arif, Y. M. and Lujan-Mora, S. Enhancing the educational model using mixed reality technologies with Meta Quest 3 a usability analysis using IBM-CSUQ. IEEE Access, 13:56930–56945, 2025.
Aros, M. Tyger, C. L. and Chaparro, B. S. Unraveling the Meta Quest 3 an out-of-box experience of the future of mixed reality headsets. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Springer, 3–8, 2024.
Araya, R. C. Chen, Y. and Rojas-Munoz, E. Don’t walk away virtual safety boundaries for collaborative virtual reality learning environments. 2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 1–5, 2023.
Tseng, W.-J. Kontrazis, P. D. Lecolinet, E. Huron, S. and Gugenheimer, J. Understanding interaction and breakouts of safety boundaries in virtual reality through mixed-method studies. 2024 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), 482–492, 2024.
Meta. Set up your boundary for Meta Quest. [link]
Publicado
30/09/2025
Como Citar
PEREIRA, Lucas Alviene; NEGRÃO, Matheus D.; MACIEL, Anderson; TORCHELSEN, Rafael; NEDEL, Luciana; FREITAS, Carla M. D. S..
Exploring a Safe Zone-Based Locomotion Method with Natural Movement and Adaptive Teleportation for Immersive Environments. In: SIMPÓSIO DE REALIDADE VIRTUAL E AUMENTADA (SVR), 27. , 2025, Salvador/BA.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2025
.
p. 373-381.
