Redirected Jumping: Perceptual Detection Rates for Curvature Gains

Redirected walking (RDW) techniques provide a way to explore a virtual space that is larger than the available physical space by imperceptibly manipulating the virtual world view or motions. These manipulations introduce conflicts between real and virtual cues (e.g., visual-vestibular conflicts) which can be disturbing when detectable by users. The empirically established detection thresholds of rotation manipulation for RDW still require a large physical tracking space and are therefore impractical for general-purpose Virtual Reality (VR) applications. We investigate Redirected Jumping (RDJ) as a new locomotion metaphor for redirection to partially address this limitation, and because jumping is a common interaction for environments like games. We investigated the detection rates for different curvature gains during RDJ. The probability of users detecting RDJ appears substantially lower than that of RDW, meaning designers can get away with greater manipulations with RDJ than with RDW. We postulate that the excessive vertical (up/down) movement present when jumping introduces increased vestibular noise compared to normal walking, thereby supporting greater rotational manipulations. Our study suggests that the potential combination of metaphors (e.g., walking and jumping) could further reduce the required physical space for locomotion in VR.