You only need 10 minutes with a keyboard and mouse set-up to find out that moving around in VR is completely different from anything else in gaming. Here we take a look at some of the techniques developers are using to put you into VR, not only so you can feel like you're somewhere else, but so you won't be nauseous when you start exploring. Unfortunate to say, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for locomotion in VR games—at least not the kind we're used to when playing games on monitors or TVs. While clever hardware solutions like the omni-directional treadmill Virtuix Omni, or entire VR parks like The VOID do an excellent job of approximating endlessly walkable terrain, VR developers are thinking about the average user—the person with some room, a headset, and controller(s)—and they want that user to be able to explore expansive spaces in virtual reality comfortably. Developers have been experimenting with just how to do this, and there's now a number of different virtual reality locomotion techniques that provide comfortable experiences. Roomscale Locomotion So far there's nothing better than dancing with your own two feet, and Valve's Steam VR platform takes this to heart in the soon-to-release HTC Vive. Creating a large-scale tracking volume means you'll be able to walk right up to in-game characters, look under desks, hide behind mounds of treasure - truly experiencing virtual scenery like never before. Provided you aren't tangling yourself up, you'll definitely be surprised at the level of immersion you can achieve. Both Oculus and Sony offer large-scale tracking volumes, but are emphasizing a balance in standing and seated gameplay for now. Our multiple experiences with both Rift and PlayStation VR have been a positive one, and we hope to see more opportunities to engage in more standup gameplay. See Also: Following Oculus Rift Price Reveal, HTC Thinks Vive Customers will be ‘happy with their investment’ Vehicles A good cockpit makes a world of difference, because there's something innately comforting about having a solid feature in your foreground while you screech around corners in Project Cars, or blow up enemy wraiths in EVE: Valkyrie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EwQWb5IAD4 A vehicle not only adds a weightiness to your movements (which ought to be restricted by a physics engine), but also allows you to assume your natural sitting position, making for an easier 1-to-1 match-up that your brain really wants when its turning in directions it's not actually going. This is a boon for both developers currently making racing/flight/space sims, but also the players who will automatically step in needing nothing more than a chair and their smattering of peripheral goodies. Roomscale Vehicles Vehicles are nice. We like them. But when you have a room big enough for a boat, why not ... have a boat? StressLevelZero's upcoming title Hover Junkers is a 'VR only' post-apocalyptic shooter that lets you hunt down your friends online using the game's junk-encrusted hover boats. Although these sorts of 'roomscale vehicles' are still underused in current VR games, they not only address a problem, but actively use it as an integral game mechanic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff0vno8omJw The game comes out first for HTC Vive in April and in Q3/Q4 for Oculus Rift, and we're hoping other devs follow suit. See Also: ‘Hover Junkers’ Pre-order Now Available on Indiegogo Teleportation All three major headsets (HTC Vive, Ouclus Rift, PSVR) suffer a similar problem regardless of how much tracking volume they provide: when you hit the wall in the real world, you're going to need a way of getting past it in the virtual. Teleportation is a novel way of addressing a number of things that induce nausea in VR, like the dreaded 'yaw stick poison' - or when you use the right stick of your controller to turn your POV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-xfzXW48dc Virtual spaces like AltspaceVR, Cloudhead's Blink, Epic Games' FPS Bullet Train, Convrge and many more use teleportation to excellent effect, often including either a line-of-sight cursor or a ghostly outline that can be controlled by the player. Newly revealed title Budget Cuts directly uses teleportation as a gameplay mechanic with their unique portal system. Next Page: Flight, VR Comfort Mode and Floating Head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbp7xX9QPOc Flight Flying is legit. In fact 'too legit to quit' some might say. Ubisoft's Eagle Flight takes you high into the air, and impresses with the ability to simulate smooth, gaze-based forward motion without a hint of dizziness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoxTdZ0AO34 Olivier Palmieri, game director at Ubisoft's Montreal office, told us at Gamescom that “… I’ve been studying a lot on what causes nausea and what could be the solution. One of the key elements is to make it comfortable even if you have a lot of action like we have, and with this prototype we wanted to prove that we could have a lot of action and still remain comfortable.” Windlands from Psytec provides some convincing soaring-jumps, a feat made possible by a pair of grappling hooks that let you go from cliff-to-cliff while maintaining a constant, predictable speed. Much like a cockpit, the grappling hooks act as solid items in the foreground while keeping you anchored in the 3D space as you drop from the skies in futility. VR Comfort Mode Standing VR experiences are an incredible way of creating immersion, especially if you're meant to be walking on your little virtual feet. But from time to time we all need to sit down and take a rest, and that's where 'VR comfort mode' comes it. We know that using the right stick on a controller is hazardous to immersion, and while convention has us sitting straight forward and not moving our heads around, VR comfort mode gives us the opportunity to slip back into old gaming habits without too much detraction from the experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp0eMNSVtZA Featuring a sort of micro-teleportation, VR comfort mode disables the smooth, world-shifting pan you might make with the right stick, and replaces it with a 'snap-to' turn. Snapping your view, sometimes with a black frame spliced in-between to bridge whatever shock there way be of instantly changing your POV, provides the user with a quick way of turning around without tangling up cords around a swivel chair. Gaze-based locomotion - i.e. 'look there and go there' - is also a popular choice among devs that include VR comfort mode in their first-person games, but is less natural than 'snap-to' turns. See Also: ‘Adventure Time’ Game Coming Soon to All Major VR Headsets Floating Head (Third-Person) Third-person games like Lucky's Tale, Chronos, or Adventure Time: Magic Man's Head Games afford great VR gameplay without the locomotion issues seen in first-person titles—potentially giving VR-newcomers something a little more familiar to deal with. In traditional 3D platformers like Banjo-Kazooie, your POV will oftentimes trail comfortably behind your character. The same is true for Lucky's Tale, Edge of Nowhere, and likely more VR 3D platformers to come, and is a logical extension of the genre. https://youtu.be/KezCxrrchGE In the case of Chronos however, your POV is teleported to a number of a fixed-position 360 vantage points. Playing the demo, it was a almost overwhelming to change scenery so quickly at first, but it eventually became a part of the game's 'wow factor' as entirely new areas are splayed out in front of you. Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe explained in an interview with Gamasutra at E3 2015 some of his thoughts on third-person games. “I think people are underestimating the third-person viewpoint a little bit … There’s a ton of great content that’s in third-person, and it plays best with the gamepad," Iribe said. Gamers of all ages can appreciate the easily recognizable genre, and step into it regardless of experience. It's possible for a poorly designed VR system to make you motion sick when you shouldn't be, but beyond a certain threshold, motion sickness is fundamentally a human problem, not a technical one. Even if we had the perfect VR headset, which showed us a virtual world that is indistinguishable from real life, there's still potential for motion sickness. And that's because humans get motion sick even without a VR headset. Driving in a car, riding a rollercoaster, sailing in a boat, or pulling negative Gs in a stunt plane—all of these things can make is motion sick, and some of us are more sensitive than others. At this point in the development of virtual reality, making a nausea free experience is largely a design problem, not a lack of technological capability.