This experiment was largely successful, though there were a few points that stood out as having room for improvement. One thing we very much wanted to avoid was a simple “point and click” teleportation-type traversal. For one thing, that mechanic has already been done; our use of it would not break any new ground in VR design principles. Additionally, we felt that the teleportation design carried a high chance of simulation sickness, since finding you have traveled from point A to a fairly distant point B in a very short time can be a very uncomfortable and disorienting experience.
The core mechanic chosen to enable environment interaction and traversal was a grappling hook that the player could shoot out and retract. Such a tool allowed the player to interact with far away objects, pulling them into the Vive’s play space for more traditional interaction (in our case, this meant reaching down and using the Vive controllers’ grip buttons to pick up and carry the object). By firing at special grapple targets throughout the world, the player could also move the play space within the world, allowing them to “physically” occupy spaces beyond where they spawn into the world. This world traversal was accomplished mechanics-wise by moving the controller in the opposite direction of the grapple target; code-wise, this action simply moved the SteamVR CameraRig prefab towards the grapple target.
We feel having the player grapple an object and pull themselves to it to move in the world worked very well. Because the player had to do a physical action (rather than just press a button, for example) to move, and could do so at their own pace, they were able to mentally brace themselves for the motion. On the other hand, because the player had to pull back the controller to move, the mechanic runs the risk of getting very repetitive and tiring. This repetition ended up being one of our biggest issues with our final prototype.
As a result, we came up with two potential implementations for the world traversal. The first system, which is what we originally built and stuck with, had lower potential for motion sickness, but a higher potential of quickly tiring the player. The second system, which we did not explore due to time constraints, would presumably have a higher risk of motion sickness, but an almost non-existent risk of tiring the player. It likely would have involved simply pressing a button, rather than performing a repetitive motion, to reel in the grapple at a constant, predetermined speed.
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