Put down the controller, enable “Walking” in a virtual reality (VR) environment: A review

Abstract

Moving, from one place to another place, is a fundamental, and somehow an important human activity. The ability to do so, we called it “locomotion”. Not only in the real world, locomotion remained as a fundamental characteristic that is important in the virtual world in order to allow the user for travelling throughout different space inside the virtual world. This paper reviews the methods used to enable locomotion, or we called it virtual travel, in virtual reality (VR) environment. The focus of this paper will fall into the methods involved “walking” action as the means of input. These methods can be mainly categorized into three: walking with repositioning device, real walking and walking-in-place (WIP). The main concepts, and the pros and cons of these methods are highlighted in this paper.