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Thoughts about Room Scale VR

HiThere_
Superstar
You need roughly 1m x 1m to stand still holding a gamepad, while being able to rotate 360°

You need an extra ~0.5m clearance on all sides to stretch your arms out if you're going to use 6D hand controllers, so that's 2m x 2m for a standing up experience with 6D hand controllers.

If you want to be able to walk 1m in each direction, then you need a 3m x 3m room (unless you want to keep your controllers stuck to your body).

But 1m is nothing so you really want at least 2m in each direction, which requires a 4m x 4m room.

And most users don't even have a 3m x 3m empty space to dedicate to VR, and probably ten times less then that have a 4m x 4m empty space.

You may think requiring 2m x 2m (from floor to ceiling) for just a 360° standing up experience is stretching it, but truth is my own space is roughly a 1.8m x 1.8 space and before I knew it I found myself both bending forward a bit on top of stretching my arm out as far as I could, which resulted in me banging my hand controller into furniture, so that's an extra 0.1 m missing on each side and 2m x 2m is in fact just barely enough for and adult.

Assuming most users will have to clear up just to achieve a full 2m x 2m empty space right next to their PC just to pull off that kind of standing up VR, then financially speaking that just doesn't leave much room for... room scale VR.

Meaning that outside of an impressive but misleading 4m x 4m demonstration booth, what makes more sense is developing motion sickness free hardware and software mechanics for creating unlimited movement within a 2m x 2m space.
21 REPLIES 21

HiThere_
Superstar

Pablito said:

Even now, I seen huge decrease of chatter on this forum about room scale.  But the big indicator is You Tube- nearly no new videos showing off any significant room scale use.  Sometimes a vid of someone taking a step or two in either direction.


Well in this forum thread I basically explained why : It's because being able to take just ~2 steps in every direction doesn't require a 2mx2m space but rather a 3m x 3m (to provide the extra 0.5m of room clearance on all four sides to allow for arm movement beyond the smaller walking space), which ~80% of VR users simply don't have.

With that 2m x 2m space being just barely enough for a standing/sitting experience without bumping your 6D hand controllers into your furniture when stretching your arms out (assuming a ~2m arm span, and assuming you're not bending over to overstretch your reach beyond a 1m radius).

I see a great future for Touch like 6D hand controllers, as the price of VR drops. But no amount of price drop, not even handing out HTC Vives for free, will allow Room Scale VR to take off in the general public, because for that to happen you'd need to be handing out empty 4mx4m rooms instead.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Zenbane said:

Nice pic, kevin. Roomscale definitely has a place amongst indoor family picnics.


😄
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959