Put me There: A Systematic Investigation of the Foundations of Egocentric Selection-Based Travel in Virtual Reality

• Applicants: Dr. Tim Weißker; Dr. Daniel Zielasko
• Subject Area: Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 528403131

Teleportation has emerged as one of the most widely adopted forms of travel through immersive virtual environments as it minimizes the occurrence of sickness symptoms for many users. Despite its significance, however, several major research questions on the foundational building blocks that make up these techniques remain unanswered, with many people resorting to ground-restricted teleportation with default parameters as offered by their development platform. In this joint research effort between Dr. Weissker (RWTH Aachen University) and Dr. Zielasko (University of Trier), we aim to deepen our understanding of teleportation interfaces by investigating different target specification metaphors and pre-travel information and their effects on travel precision, efficiency, usability, and predictability. Our research is divided into four phases, starting with an analysis of different parametrizations of ground-based teleportation and the resulting tradeoff between selection distance and precision. These insights then serve as a basis for further research on the successful instantiation of more advanced teleportation interfaces, which allow the user to travel to targets beyond the ground plane (Dr. Weissker) as well as to incorporate virtual rotations into the movement when their physical space is confined (Dr. Zielasko). By seamlessly extending and opening up conventional teleportation techniques, these additions will enable users to gain novel perspectives on the scene, travel to targets more expeditiously, and maneuver around objects of interest more efficiently. The project concludes with a final consolidation phase, in which we formulate an overarching summary of our insights as well as derive design guidelines to develop expressive teleportation interfaces in immersive virtual reality. Based on the already widespread use of basic teleportation in head-mounted displays, these foundational research insights will have a profound impact on a large variety of academic and industrial virtual reality applications.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants