Locomotion

Locomotion is one of the largest challenges XR designers face when building virtual worlds.

If you are designing an experience from scratch, the first observation is this: Don’t implement locomotion.

Teleportation has become a starting point, but it shouldn’t be. It’s useful for prototyping and a convenient solution for accessibility, and working with multi-sized rooms.

Before exploring any of the pages that discuss locomotion, stop and seriously consider if it is truly neccesary for the experience you are building.

• Does the user need to move?
• Can you transition the user through different rooms?
• Can you resize the environment to fit the users play space?
• No, really, do you really need locomtion?

A character controller is often the starting point for a games designer, but it should not be the starting point for a VR Experience designer. A user’s head and hands is an existing character controller. Starting an experience elsewhere is important.