Abstract

Locomotion is an important task in many virtual reality (VR) applications. Locomotion requires two different directional settings for: (1) translation to a target, and (2) body rotation. Conventional locomotion methods mostly make use of the hand-held controller for such directional control. The controller-based directional setting may not be natural, as in real life, humans set directions with the gaze, often together with the head/body rotation. Note that the view direction is independently and naturally controlled by the head (or gaze) direction. In this paper, we propose to use the peripheral gaze for body rotation, seamlessly together with the foveal gaze for the view control, so that the two tasks practically do not interfere with one another. In the comparative study, the peripheral gaze showed similar task performance to the controller-based rotation but with reduced VR sickness and improved usability