Walking in place using the Microsoft Kinect to explore a large VE

In this work, we present a simple method of "walking in place" (WIP) using the Microsoft Kinect to explore a virtual environment (VE) with a head-mounted display (HMD). Other studies have shown that WIP to explore a VE is equivalent to normal walking in terms of spatial orientation. This suggests that WIP is a promising way to explore a large VE. The Microsoft Kinect sensor is a great tool for implementing WIP because it enables real time skeletal tracking and is relatively inexpensive (110 USD). However, the skeletal information obtained from Kinect sensors can be noisy. Thus, this research discusses how we combined the data from two Kinects to implement a robust WIP algorithm. We evaluate our algorithm and directly compare it to joystick navigation of a large VE. We also explore the possibility of scaling the gain of WIP so that one WIP step forward carries the user two steps forward in virtual space.

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