On the Preference for Travel by Steering in a Virtual Reality Game

Martin Kraus

Computer Graphics Group, Aalborg University, Rendsburggade 14, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark

Keywords:

Virtual Reality, User Interface, Travel, Video Game, Gaming, Motion Sickness, Cybersickness.

Abstract:

Travel is one of the most important tasks in virtual reality (VR) experiences. Paradoxically, the most popular

travel techniques in virtual reality games are known to be more likely to cause cybersickness than some of

the less popular travel techniques. Recently, at least one VR gaming company shared quantitative data on this

issue. In an attempt to explain this data, this work argues that steering techniques might result in stronger im-

mersion, better physical ergonomics, and more pleasure than offered by teleportation techniques. Furthermore,

trends are identiﬁed that might reduce the preference for steering techniques in the future. The presented dis-

cussion of current and future preferences for steering techniques in VR games might help to better understand

and design for the needs of VR players.

1 INTRODUCTION

Travel in virtual reality experiences is the task of mov-

ing from one virtual location to another virtual lo-

cation. LaViola et al. (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 318)

observed that “travel is easily the most common and

universal interaction task in 3D interfaces.” While

travel is not required by all Virtual Reality (VR) expe-

riences, many VR applications and VR game genres

require travel.

Travel techniques are interaction methods that en-

able users of an interface to travel. Travel tech-

niques may be classiﬁed by the metaphors that they

are based on. LaViola et al. (LaViola et al., 2017,

pp. 325) distinguish between walking metaphors (in-

cluding real walking and redirected walking), steer-

ing metaphors (including gaze-directed steering and

hand-directed steering), and selection-based travel

metaphors (including selection of a target location

and teleportation or very fast “blink” movement to it),

and manipulation-based travel metaphors.

A well-known problem of many travel techniques

(with the exception of real walking) is that they often

result in cybersickness (also known as simulator sick-

ness or – more speciﬁcally – VR sickness) because

they require a mismatch between the sensory infor-

mation received by the visual system and the vestibu-

lar system of users (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 462).

Therefore, changing the travel technique is among the

most promising methods of preventing cybersickness

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0331-051X

(LaViola et al., 2017, p. 507).

However, developers of VR games are facing re-

quests by players to offer travel techniques – in par-

ticular steering techniques – that are known to cause

more cases of cybersickness. The next section dis-

cusses the speciﬁc case of the multiplayer video game

“Rec Room” (Rec Room Inc., 2016); including data

on VR players’ overwhelming preference for steering

techniques compared to teleportation techniques.

Section 3 discusses possible reasons for these

preferences. Comments by players on discussion fo-

rums suggest that many players are willing to go

through a period of repeated cybersickness to adapt

to steering techniques (“getting their VR legs”) such

that they are able to use steering techniques without

signiﬁcant symptoms of cybersickness. This willing-

ness of VR players suggests that there are signiﬁcant

beneﬁts to steering techniques compared to telepor-

tation. Speciﬁcally, Section 3 argues that there are

features of steering techniques that are likely to result

in stronger immersion, better physical ergonmonics,

and more pleasure than offered by teleportation tech-

niques (including very fast “blink” movement).

Section 4 attempts to identify trends that might

change today’s preferences for steering techniques in

the future. Section 5 concludes this work, while Sec-

tion 6 summarizes suggestions for future work on this

topic.

Kraus, M.

On the Preference for Travel by Steering in a Virtual Reality Game.

DOI: 10.5220/0009102803410346

In Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2020) - Volume 1: GRAPP, pages

341-346

ISBN: 978-989-758-402-2; ISSN: 2184-4321

341

2 DATA ON PLAYERS’

PREFERENCES

Controlled, large-scale user studies about players’

preferred travel techniques are difﬁcult for various

reasons. One important challenge is that players

might be quick to reject techniques that cause symp-

toms of cybersickness in a controlled lab experiment.

On the other hand, there is anecdotal evidence that

some VR games can provide the motivation to adapt

to such techniques such that players prefer them over

other techniques – a process that might require weeks

of exposure to cybersickness. Creating a VR game

of sufﬁcient quality to provide this motivation is dif-

ﬁcult. Even if a published popular VR game is used,

it would be ethically and organizationally difﬁcult to

provide test participants with the opportunity to adapt

to a travel technique that causes symptoms of cyber-

sickness. This leaves the possibility of ﬁnding a rep-

resentative sample of existing players of a popular VR

game that offers multiple travel techniques. This ap-

proach is challenging because of the small userbases

of today’s VR games.

On the other hand, user data of successful VR

games is usually protected by companies that not only

need to protect the privacy of their users but also

the competitive advantage that their user data pro-

vides them. Due to these difﬁculties, it is particu-

larly worthwhile to interpret data from “natural exper-

iments” (DiNardo, 2016) that is provided by VR game

companies. While this data usually does not meet the

standards for data from scientiﬁc experiments – and,

in fact, many “natural experiments” are not scientiﬁc

experiments – it can still provide valuable insights if

interpreted with care as shown by many examples in

economics and social sciences (DiNardo, 2016).

Here, we cite data provided in September 2019

by Cameron Brown (“gribbly”), Chief Creative Of-

ﬁcer (CCO) of Rec Room Inc., about players of the

video game Rec Room (Rec Room Inc., 2016): “...

looking at VR players only, ∼90% of our VR users

choose to use smooth locomotion. This is the case

even though teleport is the recommended default. So

fully 90% of the VR userbase is actively opting in to

smooth locomotion” (Brown, 2019). Rec Room is a

cross-platform, multiplayer online game that allows

players to play and create a wide variety of games to-

gether, e.g., sports games, ﬁrst-person shooters, dun-

geon crawlers, tabletop games, etc.

2.1 Userbase

To understand the meaning of the cited comment

(Brown, 2019), additional information about the user-

base of the game Rec Room is necessary: It was ﬁrst

published in June 2016 for SteamVR Head-Mounted

Displays (HMDs) with 6-degrees-of-freedom con-

trollers, speciﬁcally the HTC Vive headset. Since De-

cember 2016, the game has also been available in the

Oculus store for Oculus Rift headsets with Oculus

Touch controllers; since October 2017 for PlaySta-

tion VR headsets with Move controllers; also since

October 2017 for Windows Mixed Reality headsets

(due to the release of the “Windows Mixed Reality

SteamVR preview”), and since May 2019, for Oculus

Quest headsets with Oculus Touch controllers. The

game has also been available on other platforms but

players on those platforms are not part of the “VR

userbase”.

No accurate ﬁgures are available for the number

of active players. In early 2019, Rec Room Inc. an-

nounced that the (free-to-play) game was installed on

more than one million VR headsets (Rec Room Inc.,

2019). Shawn Whiting, Head of Community and em-

ployee of Rec Room Inc., implied in a comment in

early 2019 that there were more than 5,000 daily play-

ers on Steam (Au, 2019). However, this number in-

cludes non-VR players using the Steam version but it

does not include players on PlayStation VR nor play-

ers of the Oculus versions of the game.

For the purpose of this work, it appears safe to

assume that Rec Room has a signiﬁcant number of

active VR players – more than most lab experiments

could include – on the most popular VR headsets as

of mid 2019.

2.2 Teleportation

As implied in the cited comment by Brown (Brown,

2019), new VR players of Rec Room have a choice

between “smooth locomotion” and “teleport”, with

“teleport” being the “default.” (On some platforms at

certain times, new players have been required to make

a choice between “smooth locomotion” and “teleport”

with the recommendation to choose “teleport” if in

Figure 1: A player in Rec Room, who is selecting a target

position (green) for teleporting.

GRAPP 2020 - 15th International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

342

doubt.)

Until March 2018, the only travel technique for

VR players was teleportation with an arc originating

from either controller to select the target location (see

Figure 1). To avoid spatial disorientation, players are

usually not rotated by the teleportation. An excep-

tion is teleportation onto virtual seats, which automat-

ically rotates players to face in the forward direction

of the seat. Since April 2017, a so-called “motion

teleport” option is the default, which is a very quick

movement to the target location as recommended by

LaViola et al. (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 345).

2.3 Steering Techniques

In May 2018, steering techniques for travel were in-

troduced in Rec Room, which were reﬁned within

a few months. The default option is a one-handed

“hand-directed steering” technique (LaViola et al.,

2017, p. 340) where the user has to specify a “walking

hand” to control travel while the corresponding button

on the other hand’s controller allows virtual jumping.

All supported controllers – except the PlayStation

Move controllers – include a two-degrees-of-freedom

thumbstick or touchpad, which optionally may be

used for one of two “Thumbstick Walk modes.” If

“Thumbstick Walk mode” is set to “Head”, the steer-

ing technique corresponds to an extension of “gaze-

directed steering” (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 339) that

maps the forward direction of the controller’s thumb-

stick or touchpad to the viewing direction of the

player. Correspondingly, left, right, and backward di-

rections of the controller’s thumbstick or touchpad are

mapped to directions relative to this viewing direc-

tion. As mentioned by LaViola et al., this allows for

the ability to strafe. If “Thumbstick Walk mode” is set

to “Hand”, the forward direction of the controller’s

thumbstick or touchpad is mapped to the direction

that the controller of the “walking hand” is pointing

at. Other directions on the thumbstick or touchpad

are again mapped to directions relative to this direc-

tion. Supposedly, this large range of steering tech-

niques was included to accommodate the preferences

of as many players as possible, in particular players

who are used to one of these steering techniques in

other VR games.

3 REASONS FOR PLAYERS’

PREFERENCES

This section presents potential reasons for the pref-

erence for steering techniques over teleportation by

90% of VR players of Rec Room that was described

in Section 2. This preference is surprising as steer-

ing techniques are known to be more likely to cause

cybersickness (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 462) and com-

ments by Rec Room players in discussion forums

show that steering in Rec Room is no exception.

3.1 Game-speciﬁc Reasons

The strong preference for steering techniques in

Rec Room is particularly surprising since all of the

games and rooms in Rec Room were originally (un-

til May 2018) only playable with teleportation and

were designed for this travel technique. Speciﬁcally,

many games require a short pause between succes-

sive teleportations, which leads to very speciﬁc forms

of gameplay, e.g., a two-player close-range combat

where players alternate between shooting each other

and teleporting behind the back of each other. Some

players prefer teleportation because of these forms of

gameplay.

Since steering has been introduced in May 2018,

the developers appeared to attempt to balance tele-

portation and steering to allow players who are us-

ing different travel techniques to play the built-in

games together. The main exception is a built-in game

(“Stunt Runner”) that was released in September 2019

and only supports steering techniques. It is unclear

whether the data cited by Brown (Brown, 2019) was

already inﬂuenced by the release of this game.

Many player-created rooms in Rec Room (which

were introduced in December 2017) only support

steering techniques for travel, which is likely to con-

tribute to the preference for steering techniques. Play-

ers spend about 40% of their time in player-created

rooms (Rec Room Inc., 2019), which means that the

inﬂuence of the steering-only player-created rooms on

players’ preferences is somewhat limited.

Presumably, the players of Rec Room are rela-

tively young, which might mean that they are on aver-

age less susceptible to cybersickness than the general

population. However, no information about the age

distribution of players is available.

Since Rec Room is a social game, players inter-

act and, therefore, are likely to inﬂuence each other’s

preferences for travel techniques. Players preferring

one travel technique might exert peer pressure on

players preferring a different travel technique, for ex-

ample, because they perceive that the other travel

technique provides an unfair advantage. Such ef-

forts by players in favor of steering techniques as

well as teleportation techniques have been observed.

While this can be a reinforcing factor, it cannot in

itself explain why a large majority of players of a

game that was originally only playable with teleporta-

On the Preference for Travel by Steering in a Virtual Reality Game

343

tion change their preference in favor of steering tech-

niques.

Overall, there are more game-speciﬁc reasons in

Rec Room that are likely to increase the preference

for steering techniques over teleportation than to the

opposite effect, but it is unlikely that these reasons

alone could explain the overwhelming preference for

steering techniques.

3.2 Immersion

In this section, “immersion” refers to “the objective

degree to which a VR system and application projects

stimuli onto the sensory receptors of users in a way

that is extensive, matching, surrounding, vivid, inter-

active, and plot informing.” (Jerald, 2015, p. 45).

In general, real movement (i.e., physical move-

ment by the player that is mapped directly to virtual

movement) is known to be more immersive compared

to other travel techniques (LaViola et al., 2017, p.

326-328). In a comparison between steering tech-

niques and teleportation for playing, however, it is

less clear, which technique is more immersive.

Some players argue that teleportation leads to a

more “immersive” game experience for them. The

reasoning is that teleportation is often designed to re-

quire small pauses between successive teleportations

(a “cooldown period”). During these pauses, players

can only move by real movement. In shooting games,

these movements include dodging projectiles, taking

cover, peeking around corners, etc. Thus, the usage

of teleportation can indirectly increase immersion by

strongly encouraging real movement to perform bet-

ter in a game.

However, this effect depends on the willingness

and ability of players to move physically. If players

do not actually move physically, steering techniques

provide visual stimuli that match the experience of

continuous travel much better than teleportation be-

tween locations. Furthermore, the visual stimuli are

more vivid in the sense of continuous optical ﬂow

during travel. Perceptually, they are usually more ex-

tensive since the apparent movement of a 3D envi-

ronment usually features motion parallax, which is an

important depth cue (Jerald, 2015, p. 118-120).

3.3 Physical Ergonomics

In VR, steering techniques and teleportation in Rec

Room make use of 6-degrees-of-freedom controllers.

These controllers are (at least to a certain degree)

designed for good physical ergonomics; speciﬁcally,

they require very little physical effort to use them.

As discussed in Section 3.2, however, the required

pauses between successive teleportations encourage

real movement. Speciﬁcally, dodging projectiles en-

courages unnaturally sudden and fast movements that

may result in high physical exertion. In this sense, the

use of teleportation may indirectly result in more ex-

ertion and, therefore, worse physical ergonomics than

the use of steering.

Avoiding the exertion by real movements (specif-

ically dodging projectiles) or the inability to perform

these real movements is therefore a reason to prefer

steering techniques because it allows players to per-

form some of these actions virtually just by pressing

buttons with their ﬁngers.

3.4 Pleasure

This section discusses three features of steering tech-

niques compared to teleportation in Rec Room and

how they may shape players’ preferences: immedi-

ate feedback, integration with other interaction tech-

niques, and matching players’ expectations.

In interaction design, it is well known that “feed-

back should be immediate; otherwise users may be-

come frustrated or give up before tasks are com-

pleted” (Jerald, 2015, p. 283). As mentioned above,

teleportation in Rec Room often requires players to

pause between successive teleportations. If players

try to teleport during these pauses, immediate visual

feedback is provided but teleporting is not possible

until the end of the pause. On the other hand, steering

techniques offer “continuous control of the direction

of motion by the user” (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 339),

i.e., feedback in the form of a new direction or ve-

locity is immediate. Therefore, steering techniques

potentially result in a greater sense of freedom and

control, which may result in greater game enjoyment

(Ryan et al., 2006).

LaViola et al. suggest that a travel technique

should be chosen “that can be easily integrated with

other interaction techniques in the application” (LaVi-

ola et al., 2017, p. 368). Teleportation in Rec Room

is not integrated with virtual “jumping” (i.e., push-

ing the player’s avatar and virtual camera upwards for

a short period of time), presumably because it may

cause cybersickness. On the other hand, steering tech-

niques in Rec Room are integrated with virtual jump-

ing, presumably because players who are not nega-

tively affected by steering techniques are likely to tol-

erate jumping as well. Thus, steering techniques in

Rec Room allow for intense movements, e.g., long

jumps from buildings, jump attacks, and sliding down

steep slopes. Players who want to enjoy virtual jump-

ing or any movement that it makes possible have to

use a steering technique instead of teleportation.

GRAPP 2020 - 15th International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

344

One way to improve the chances of providing a

pleasurable experience to players is to match their ex-

pectations, which are often based on a game’s genre

or – more generally spoken – on a “schema” (Dou-

glas and Hargadon, 2000) that players associate with

a game. For readers of interactive narratives, Dou-

glas and Hargadon describe the relation in this way:

“Readers’ enjoyment of affective experiences is tied

closely to their expectations, which are linked di-

rectly to the schemas readers identify. By invoking

familiar schemas [...], writers and designers of in-

teractive narratives provide readers with an experi-

ence that closely matches their expectations” (Dou-

glas and Hargadon, 2000). If there is a similar rela-

tion between players’ expectations and game genres,

then travel techniques that provide more features of

an associated game genre are more likely to provide

a pleasurable experience than other travel techniques.

Since many games in Rec Room are strongly associ-

ated with First-Person Shooters (FPS), it is to be ex-

pected that players who enjoy traditional FPS tend to

enjoy steering techniques, which support straﬁng (and

therefore techniques in FPS such as “circle straﬁng”)

and jumping (and therefore techniques in FPS such as

“bunny hopping” and “trickjumps”), more than they

enjoy teleportation.

4 PREDICTIONS ON FUTURE

PREFERENCES

The discussion in Section 3 shows that there are

several reasons that might explain the overwhelm-

ing preference for steering techniques in Rec Room.

The discussion also showed that preferences for travel

techniques in Rec Room changed over time. There-

fore, this section presents some factors that are likely

to change future preferences for steering techniques

in VR games.

4.1 More Casual Players

As more powerful VR equipment is becoming more

affordable and more attractive VR games are be-

ing published, the VR gaming audience is likely

to shift from early adopters to mainstream, includ-

ing many casual players. This larger audience will

probably be less motivated to suffer cybersickness

in order to adapt to steering techniques than today’s

early adopters; thus, future players are more likely

to avoid steering techniques by choosing alternative

travel techniques (including teleportation) or games

that do not require travel as a core game mechanic.

4.2 Longer Play Sessions

While more casual users are probably less likely to

use steering techniques, some “hardcore” players who

want to play longer play sessions (i.e., multiple hours)

might also prefer alternatives to steering techniques

since they can cause discomfort that builds up slowly

over time. Anecdotally, even the self-proclaimed

“hardcore VR enthusiast” and YouTuber Thomas Po-

ersch (“VoodooDE”) admitted that he only plays VR

sessions of up to one hour (Poersch, 2019). The au-

thor is also not using steering techniques in VR for

more than an hour but is regularly using teleportation

for multiple hours at a time.

4.3 More Real Walking

Many location-based VR experiences employ real

walking and redirected walking (sometimes described

as “free roam(ing) VR”), which is more immersive

than steering techniques (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 327).

As more VR players are exposed to these experiences,

they are more likely to appreciate or even expect sim-

ilarly immersive experiences at home. The popular

VR game “Tea for God” (Ciupi

nski, 2019) provides a

preview of the potential of such games at home.

4.4 New Travel Techniques

LaViola et al. suggest that “researchers who come

up with the most effective methods [for prevent-

ing cybersickness] will have a huge impact on com-

fort in AR and VR” (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 508).

While new travel techniques that prevent cybersick-

ness might have a strong impact, the VR game

“Tea for God” (Ciupi

nski, 2019) points to a dif-

ferent solution: previous research using real walk-

ing in self-overlapping architecture and impossible

spaces (LaViola et al., 2017, p. 329) was usually con-

cerned with users noticing the self-overlapping nature

of these spaces. “Tea for God,” however, does not at-

tempt to hide the self-overlapping nature of the proce-

durally generated levels. On the contrary, this feature

becomes a kind of optical illusion that many players

appear to enjoy. This opens many possibilities for

level design (in particular in small physical spaces)

that were not considered in previous research. Thus,

the solution might not be a new travel technique but

new ways of using old ones.

On the Preference for Travel by Steering in a Virtual Reality Game

345

5 CONCLUSIONS

This works presents data showing that a large part

of today’s VR gaming audience prefers steering tech-

niques over teleportation. Therefore, it might be com-

mercially reasonable to focus on steering techniques

in some VR games – even if it means that many po-

tential players are not able to enjoy these games due

to cybersickness. It also means that non-gaming VR

applications might beneﬁt from an option to use steer-

ing techniques as many VR players will prefer these

techniques compared to other travel techniques.

Multiple reasons for preferring steering tech-

niques have been discussed. Combined, these reasons

show how challenging the problem of ﬁnding prefer-

able travel techniques is. Even the more immersive

real walking techniques fall short in terms of exertion

and meeting expectations of some players.

As LaViola et al. state, cybersickness from a VR

product “is a serious problem—if someone gets seri-

ously sick [...] they may not want to use it again or

recommend it to their friends” (LaViola et al., 2017,

p. 507). Some trends have been identiﬁed that might

lead to preferences for other travel techniques with

a smaller risk of causing cybersickness in the future.

Supporting these trends might help to accelerate VR’s

development into a mainstream entertainment tech-

nology.

6 FUTURE WORK

The data presented in this work does not meet sci-

entiﬁc requirements. It is presented here as starting

point for a discussion of potential reasons that could

explain it. More data about players’ long-term prefer-

ences for travel techniques is needed. While the pre-

sented reasons are based on scientiﬁc literature, their

relevance should be conﬁrmed by studies on VR play-

ers. Similarly, the effects of the trends discussed in

Section 4 are speculative and should be conﬁrmed by

studies on VR players.

Assuming that such studies would conﬁrm some

of the presented hypotheses, this work could encour-

age and – to a certain degree – guide research on VR

travel techniques that prevent cybersickness and are

attractive to VR players at the same time.

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