Movement in virtual reality often limits immersion. For large virtual spaces, travelling involves moving a joystick or utilizing point-and-click teleportation. Trent Piercy, president of VR/AR@MIT, and fellow member Herbert Turner have been working on a new form of movement: jumping. This research was inspired by their agreement that existing forms of movement are lacking. Piercy detailed why he thinks movement has to improve:
“When you put someone in VR for the first time, they always can intuitively begin to understand using their hands, looking around, et cetera,” explains Piercy, “But the thing I’ve noticed is that movement isn’t the same. Different games use various systems for moving, and learning it is like a normal video game, with the trial-and-error of input sensitivity and learning the controls before you can start playing.”
Piercy and Turner have implemented their jumping mechanism into a playable form, the classic game Frogger. Rather than clicking or using joystick movement, the user crosses roads and evades obstacles by physically jumping, calibrated in the menu prior to playing. The game contains multiple levels, with numerous car speeds and a full set of sound effects. The demo is an impressive proof-of-concept which Piercy notes has gotten positive feedback from testers.
“Jumping is just the first step in alternative forms of motion in VR. If such a simple motion has this many uses, what about a more complex one?”
Piercy mentioned development by companies relating to VR treadmills and enclosures, but he hopes to find alternative forms of movement that could easily hit the mainstream or that explores areas not yet imagined. From the testing and refining of the jump-based movement system, Piercy is intrigued by what directions the technology and similar projects could take.
“Anything we can do to make VR more immersive, we want to pursue. The visual experience of newer headsets is absolutely incredible, so we want the movement experience to catch up to that.”
Piercy et al. have additionally developed a gameplay survey for users that test the game to tell the creators what benefits jumping has over other forms of movement. The goal is to better define the advantages and disadvantages of jumping versus traditional movement to help inform further projects the team will tackle.
VR Frogger is available for anyone to play on Oculus Quest and Quest 2. You can download and install Frogger for your own Oculus Quest by following the instructions on GitHub. And don’t forget to fill out the Gameplay Survey afterwards.
Keep up with Piercy and VR/AR@MIT’s projects and activities like VR Frogger by checking out the MIT VR/AR website.