Introduction
Virtual reality (VR) gaming has become the new frontier of game development, exciting every creative developer. It is a space where the possibilities for unique gaming mechanics are seemingly endless. However, as more game developers transition from traditional game development to VR, one issue is becoming a limiter to that creative freedom. Nausea, dubbed in the community as “VR sickness,” (VRS) is widely considered the biggest hurdle for VR game developers to date and for good reason: it is one of the largest barriers to entry for new adopters of the technology.
As indie developers, we at Well Told Entertainment* have identified user experience design as the number one priority to creating an enjoyable experience in VR. Whether the task is to hold a steady frame rate or ease a user into a world, our mission is to make sure that everyone—from the VR novice to the seasoned veteran—has a great time.
However, there are no experts in this space. Having spent a year as a VR game design company, we have come to know a little more about what helps users of all kinds build literacy in VR, and we’d like to share some code, shader techniques, and design principles with the community as a whole to get more people strapped in and jamming on well-made VR experiences.
Well Told Entertainment* and Learning VR
Our first steps into VR started with the curiosity behind alternate movement schemes from teleportation. Other than strict room-scale experiences, VR users were, and are still, looking for unique and clever ways to escape room scale without having to fall over or feel like they’ve been at sea. In early 2016 we were excited for the new wave of incoming VR games, but like most early adopters of VR we were skeptical after hearing the reports of VRS. After reading on the forums that people were tackling this issue through teleportation, we were eager to try out games like The Lab*, Rec Room*, and Budget Cuts*.
Though the games themselves are fantastic experiences in VR, and the teleportation solution effective against VRS, we still felt that something was off. What it boiled down to was that the act of teleportation in VR is immersion breaking, especially when unrelated to the story. Knowing that true immersion is one of VR’s greatest qualities, we were inspired to seek out what it would take for a dynamic solution to movement.
Like any curious individuals, we started our search by perusing the Reddit* forums. (r/vive, r/virtualreality, and r/oculus have plenty of inspired devs sharing their progress on indie development. In our opinion these are the best places to survey and look for creative solutions in the medium.) With movement schemes being the hottest topic in summer 2016, we noticed that a number of devs were sharing their opinions and demos online.
I read about techniques such as climbing schemes that involved using your controllers to throw your character, arm pumping to propel your character forward, and even putting one of the controllers in your belt loop to act as a pedometer that moves your character forward as you bounce. From our own research we were able to draw conclusions on unique ways to approach the problem and begin forming our own hypotheses. After a month of random testing by one of our trusted developers, Vincent Wing, we began to make progress. Based on our research, below are some of the best practices we found to combat VRS without compromising dynamic locomotion and interactive gameplay.
Considering User Experience in Virtual Reality
In late June my cofounder, Sam Warner, and I attended a VR event in Playa Vista hosted by the Interaction Design Association. Though the event was dedicated to VR, we seemed to be the only people in attendance who weren’t UX designers by trade, which made networking a little awkward. However, we were happy to find value in the presentation given by Andrew Cochrane, the guest speaker and a director working in new media. Cochrane focused on sharing his insights on VR content creation, insights we used that night to solidify our design approach for VR.
Most developers approaching VR come from either a games or film background, mediums that largely revolve around storytelling. Cochrane believes that there are no storytellers in VR. Instead, VR is an experiential medium and everyone in this space is an experience designer. In games or films, the creator has the ability to manipulate the story for the user. They follow story-act structures and use editing and effects to direct a user’s attention to enable an emotional response. However, in VR, the goal is to give the audience a feeling of complete immersion to enable an emotional response.
Thus it’s important to make sure the user has a strong sense of presence within the virtual space. The more immersive a developer can make the experience feel the better, which places a lot of responsibility on the developer, compared to developing in traditional mediums. In our experience regarding locomotion, the best practice we recommend to reduce immersion breaking and VR sickness is to always provide the player with a strong visual reference.
Spatial Orientation
To create a great feeling of presence in VR, the first step is to introduce the player to their surroundings. Though locomotion tends to get much of the blame, VRS can kick in as soon as the headset is put on, because in effect the player is putting on a blindfold. Covering one’s eyes has a big impact on balance. Try this: stand up and close your eyes. Though at first it seems like a simple task, most people find themselves starting to waver after only a short amount of time. Some may even start to fall over. The reason is because balance relies heavily on visual reference and depth perception. When the visual sense disappears, our bodies resort to proprioception for balance, which varies in ability from person to person. When someone enters a virtual world, it’s important that they have a good sense of spatial awareness before things can get magical.
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In developing Vapor Riders ‘99*, a type of skiing/gliding racing game (as seen below in the link to the video), we learned that giving the user a good reference to the floor beneath them had a huge impact in combating VRS. When a player first enters the game, we made sure to give them a good visual of the track beneath their feet, the distance ahead of them, and their surroundings.
However, based on the racing nature of the game, we had to take ground reference in Vapor Riders ‘99 a bit further. When we first tested the game in public at Virtual Reality Los Angeles 2016, some expressed discomfort relating to a user’s height to the track, particularly with taller players. In order to solve this issue we put in a simple height calibration system before play, which worked well. Below is the script we used with Unity* software that you can put into your own games.
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Source: Venture Beat