Abstract
Redirected walking (RDW) allows users to explore virtual environments in limited physical spaces by imperceptibly steering them away from obstacles and space boundaries. However, even with those techniques, the risk of collision cannot always be avoided. For such situations, resetting techniques have been proposed to provide an immediate adjustment of the physical walking direction of a user. Existing resetting techniques are either applied in-place, where the user changes orientation but stays in the same position or out-of-place methods where the user is guided to move from the current position to a safe location all while freezing the movement in the virtual world. While out-of-place methods have the potential to provide more freedom to user movements after resetting, current out-of-place methods do not provide enough guidance for the users to move to optimal locations. In this work, we propose a novel out-of-place resetting strategy that guides users to optimal physical locations with the most potential for free movement and a smaller amount of resetting required for their further movements. For this purpose, we calculate a heat map of the walking area according to the average walking distance using a simulation of the currently used RDW algorithm. Based on this heat map, we identify the most suitable position for a one-step reset within a predefined searching range and use this one as the reset point. Our results show that our method increases the average moving distance within one cycle of resetting. Furthermore, our resetting method can be applied to any physical area with obstacles. That means that RDW methods that were not suitable for such environments (e.g., Steer to Center) combined with our resetting can also be extended to such complex walking areas. In addition, we present a user interface to provide a similar visual experience between these methods, using a two-arrows indicator to help users adjust their position and direction.