About this Project

Redirected walking techniques enable natural locomotion through immersive virtual environments (VEs) that are larger than the real world workspace. Most existing techniques rely upon manipulating the mapping between physical and virtual motions while the layout of the environment remains constant. However, if the primary focus of the experience is on the virtual world’s content, rather than on its spatial layout, then the goal of redirected walking can be achieved through an entirely different strategy.

In this project, we develop flexible spaces – a novel redirection technique that enables infinite real walking in virtual environments that do not require replication of real world layouts. Flexible spaces overcome the limitations and generalize the use of overlapping (impossible) spaces and change blindness by employing procedural layout generation. Our approach allows VE designers to focus on the content of the virtual world independent of the implementation details imposed by real walking, thereby making spatial manipulation techniques more practical for use in a variety of application domains.

Project Partners

Mixed Reality Lab at USC Institute for Creative Technologies, Los Angeles, USA

Funding provided by

Vienna PhD School of Informatics

Early Prototype Video

Pictures

Overlapping Rooms	Tracked Space
Inside Virtual Rooms	Generated Hallways

Press

High-resolution press pictures are available on the TU Vienna Press Releases pages (PA 34/2013).