Procedurally generated self overlapping mazes in virtual reality

Abstract

A current research topic within virtual reality is to allow the user to move by natural walking in a virtual environment that exceeds the size of the tracking area. Multiple approaches to overlapping architecture dealing with this issue already exist, but they are either custom made for a specific tracking area size or require a tracking area too large to work efficiently for personal use. This paper proposes a method to make scalable overlapping architecture by procedural generation of tile-based mazes that seamlessly teleport the user using portals. We evaluated how the tile size of the overlapping maze affects the user’s spatial awareness of their physical position. 23 participants of Aalborg University students completed the Spatial Awareness Task of finding a tile that overlapped with their starting tile in a 3 $$\times $$ 3, 4 $$\times $$ 4, and 5 $$\times $$ 5 tile maze. Between condition 3 $$\times $$ 3 and 5 $$\times $$ 5, and condition 4 $$\times $$ 4 and 5 $$\times $$ 5, participants were more confused in the 5 $$\times $$ 5 tile maze compared to 3 $$\times $$ 3 (p =.0015) and 4 $$\times $$ 4 (p =.0295) tile mazes.