Goal

Enable real physical walking through large virtual environments using only a standard room-scale tracked space (~5×5m), without sacrificing narrative immersion or spatial coherence.

Challenge

Existing solutions each fall short in a critical way: teleportation discourages walking and causes disorientation; traditional redirected walking requires very large physical spaces; "stop and reset" methods break narrative flow. No prior technique combined real walking + narrative consistency + room-scale practicality.

Approach

Introduced cell-based redirection (CBR) — dividing the virtual world into discrete cells that exactly match the physical tracked space, then redirecting users between cells through narrative-consistent metaphors:

• Bookshelf — a spinning hidden-room bookcase rotates the user 180° virtually while they stand still physically, placing the next virtual room in the same physical footprint

• Bird — a giant bird lifts and carries the user to an adjacent outdoor cell, landing them at the position corresponding to their physical location

• Demonstrated in a treasure hunt game spanning 325 m² of virtual space using only a 5×5m physical room, with 8 rooms + 5 yard regions and 9 bookshelves

My Role

Co-researcher contributing to concept design, technique development, and prototype implementation.

Findings & Reflections

• Informal demos showed no users struggled to learn either technique — metaphors were immediately intuitive

• Multiple users were genuinely uncertain whether they had physically rotated during Bookshelf use — indicating strong immersion

• CBR is the only technique among compared approaches that simultaneously satisfies: requires physical walking, no translation/rotation gains, room-scale practical, maintains real-virtual boundary alignment, and narrative-consistent

• Key limitation: VE must be designed around cell structure — not applicable to arbitrary environments

• Cybersickness remains an open challenge, particularly when users break the Bookshelf constraint by stepping off mid-rotation

• Formal user study planned as next step