Shake-your-head: revisiting walking-in-place for desktop virtual reality

The Walking-In-Place interaction technique was introduced to navigate infinitely in 3D virtual worlds by walking in place in the real world. The technique has been initially developed for users standing in immersive setups and was built upon sophisticated visual displays and tracking equipments. In this paper, we propose to revisit the whole pipeline of the Walking-In-Place technique to match a larger set of configurations and apply it notably to the context of desktop Virtual Reality. With our novel "Shake-Your-Head" technique, the user is left with the possibility to sit down, and to use small screens and standard input devices such as a basic webcam for tracking. The locomotion simulation can compute various motions such as turning, jumping and crawling, using as sole input the head movements of the user. We also introduce the use of additional visual feedback based on camera motions to enhance the walking sensations. An experiment was conducted to compare our technique with classical input devices used for navigating in desktop VR. Interestingly, the results showed that our technique could even allow faster navigations when sitting, after a short learning. Our technique was also perceived as more fun and increasing presence, and was generally more appreciated for VR navigation.