Virtual reality world walking

[nawabkhan_u]

I didn't tried any vr headset yet.so I am asking this question.In vr games how to walk front/back and right/left.
Is this uses our full body motion tracking or just by using controller.
Most of the gameplay I watched on YouTube using HTC and oculus vr headset the people just standing still while character on game moving forward or backward.so I assume that the forward and backward movement is based on controller not by using our body.
Is it true?
If it's true then will this induce motion sickness?
Because if we are standing still and character moving forward and backward affect the body.

 

[nawabkhan_u]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from nawabkhan_u : "PC gaming vr"

I [strike]didn't[/strike] haven't tried any vr headset yet.so I am asking this question.In vr games how to walk front/back and right/left.
Is this uses our full body motion tracking or just by using controller.
Most of the gameplay I watched on YouTube using HTC and oculus vr headset the people just standing still while character on game moving forward or backward.so I assume that the forward and backward movement is based on controller not by using our body.
Is it true?
If it's true then will this induce motion sickness?
Because if we are standing still and character moving forward and backward affect the body.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

In future, please don't start two threads for the same question! -

When you start a thread on Tom's Guide, it also appears in Tom's Hardware Forum - - there is therefore no need to post the same question on both of them.

 

[cryoburner]

It will depend on the game. Consumer VR is still in its early stages, so there's a lot of experimentation going on with how to best handle things like player movement. For games where you are in a vehicle or something, regular kinds of control methods can generally work. Walking around using regular gamepad controls tends to often cause motion sickness though. One method to avoid this that has become fairly common is "teleportation", where you point to where you want to go and press a button to instantly move there. That's not really ideal for many kinds of games though. Another method that is starting to appear in some games involves just swaying your arms as if you are walking to move forward (while holding motion controllers), which can help trick the mind into not feeling discomfort. And of course, some games that are made for room-scale VR simply keep the player within a small area, and let them move around normally by walking around their room. Some games will let the player choose from various control options depending on what kind of setup they have and what they find comfortable. For those that do allow the player to walk through the virtual world using standard controls, some will incorporate things like "snap turning", which allows the player to instantly turn at predefined intervals, rather than smoothly rotating their view. Control methods in VR will likely continue to evolve over the coming years as developers figure out what works best.

 

[nawabkhan_u]

cryoburner
That means currently no vr games or vr motion tracking technology allows players walking around the vr world freely using their physical body?

 

[cryoburner]

That's kind of what room-scale VR (like the HTC Vive) allows for, but of course it's limited to a room, so you generally can't walk much more than a couple meters in any direction before encountering the walls of your room, or the limits of the tracked area. You obviously can't physically walk in one direction for any significant distance or you'll eventually run into things. : P Any "room-scale" VR game has to work around that, either by limiting you to an area smaller than your room, or combining physical walking with some other input method to let you move greater distances.

Aside from that, the arm-swinging tracking method (while optionally stepping in place) would probably be the next closest thing to physically walking as an input method, and devices like the recently released Vive trackers could be used to accurately track a player's feet, although one would still need to step in place to cover larger distances due to the limited size of most rooms. There are also some expensive omnidirectional treadmills, such as the Virtuix Omni or Cyberith Virtualizer, which are slippery concave platforms, combined with a harness system and foot tracking, which allow a player to walk or run in place, but they are large, bulky devices, and probably not very practical for most home environments, so I don't see things like that becoming common any time soon.

 

[nawabkhan_u]

htc uses the room scale tracking.
then what about the oculus santacruz prototype and mixed reality headsets?
it uses inside out tracking.
that can overtake the limitations of room scale tracking or not?

 

[Sakkura]

The Oculus Rift and Mixed Reality headsets have room-scale tracking too.

Inside-out tracking won't make a difference because people only have limited space for their VR setup anyway. So games need to rely on some kind of artificial locomotion for movement beyond a couple steps in each direction.

But most people can handle well implemented artificial locomotion with comfort modes (no smooth turning, vignetting when moving etc). The rest may have to rely on teleportation.