A landing preview reduces disorientation
Aliases: landing reticle · teleport preview · destination portal
What it is
A translucent disc and a facing arrow appear at the landing before the trigger is released. Teleport destination preview turns “where I will stand and which way I will face” into a visible promise before the jump, shrinking the prediction error at the landing instant. It does not make teleport less nauseating. It makes people turn in place less when they arrive.
Teleport without a preview is changing rooms with eyes closed. Teleport with a preview is looking through the door crack first.
Why it happens
Disorientation is a mismatch between the landing view and working memory from before the jump. A preview writes the coming floor position, heading, and sometimes a scrap of the target view into that memory in advance. When the match holds, spatial updating is still cut, but a single expected match can replace search: the landing image keeps the disc’s position and the arrow’s heading, so the coordinate frame does not have to be rebuilt.
The information in a preview is asymmetric. Position without heading still produces a body turn on landing. A thumbnail whose frustum does not match the first-person landing view becomes a new conflict. An arc plus reticle answers “which floor patch”; a facing arrow or a rotatable landing capsule answers “which way the nose points.” The second load is what actually reduces lost heading.
Studying it
Hold the teleport action constant and compare no preview / position reticle only / position plus heading / a destination portal thumbnail. Immediately after landing, take a heading point or “point to the door you just left,” and time the interval to the first purposeful step. SSQ is a confound here: preview barely changes sickness and does change disorientation.
Manipulate preview type and consistency between preview and landing view (does the thumbnail share heading with the landing). Record pointing error, in-place scan angle, and whether people rotate the landing capsule toward a target heading before release — that last measure shows the preview is being used as a heading control, not only a position control.
Where it stops holding
On a one- or two-step jump whose landing is already in view, the preview is decoration and may occlude the object being aimed at. A portal thumbnail shot at a different focal length or crop will cause people to pick the wrong heading. A facing arrow is most valuable on empty ground with no scene polarity; a unique lit exit at the landing is already doing the preview’s job. A reticle that appears only in the confirm frame is too late for working memory and behaves like no preview.
Applying it
- Mark position and heading together. Default heading to takeoff heading, and let a stick adjust it before release.
- Make preview geometry isomorphic with the landing first-person view: same heading, similar view centre. A mismatched top-down thumbnail is not a preview.
- Keep the reticle visible throughout aiming, not as a one-frame flash at confirm.
- How to check: on a corridor that requires a turn to see the exit, jump three times with heading preview and three without. With preview, the first step after landing should aim at the exit, not a half-turn scan in place.