Demonstration of RedirectedDoors: Manipulating User\u27s Orientation while Opening Doors in Virtual Reality

We present an installation demonstrating the applicability of RedirectedDoors, a redirection technique that occasionally manipulates the user\u27s orientation during door-opening motions. In this demo, the player explores an indoor virtual environment containing doors while wearing a head-mounted display (HMD), and their orientation in reality is manipulated as a function of the door\u27s opening angle. In addition, when the player opens the door by pushing or pulling the doorknob in virtual reality, the corresponding passive haptic feedback is provided by the self-actuated doorknob-type prop. When reaching the goal, they can see the manipulation results by comparing their virtual position with a real landmark position. Consequently, this demo both makes the player\u27s experience more realistic and presents the virtual environment in a comparatively small physical space

RedirectedDoors: Redirection while Opening Doors in Virtual Reality

We propose RedirectedDoors, a novel space-efficient technique for redirection in VR focused on door-opening behavior. This technique manipulates the user\u27s walking direction by rotating the entire virtual environment (VE) at a certain angular ratio of the door being opened. This ratio is called door rotation gain. At the same time, the virtual door\u27s position is kept unmanipulated so that a realistic door-opening user experience can be ensured. We designed and implemented the rotational manipulation algorithm and two types of door-opening interfaces; with and without a doorknob-Type passive haptic prop. We then conducted a user study (N = 12) to investigate redirection performance and user feedback as we examined three independent variables: door rotation gain, door-opening interface, and door-opening direction (push/pull). From the results, the estimated detection thresholds generally showed a higher space efficiency of redirection with our technique. Our results also showed that providing the haptic feedback led to a higher noticeability of redirection, but at the same time supported a higher subjective sense of realism and less discomfort. Following our results, we discuss which combinations of gain and door-opening direction can jointly provide lower noticeability and higher acceptability