A HEAD-TRACKED NAVIGATION SYSTEM

FOR VIRTUAL REALITY

Sebastian Muszynski / Interactive Content Design Laboratory / Academic advisor: Prof. Yoshifumi Kitamura

Purpose
The purpose of this research is to find out a way of im-
proving possible VR experiences in public places by al-
lowing an interaction within the VR world without the
need of using any controllers. In order to achieve that,
a head-tracked navigation system has been proposed
as a feasible solution.
Prototype
In order to test a user interface based on the head move-
ments only, a simple product-presentation application
has been designed and implemented by using a WebVR
technology.

Background
With increasing popularity of virtual reality (VR) now-
adays, people tend to buy not only virtual reality
head-mounted displays (HMD) that allow them to im-
merse into a virtual world, but also different controllers
that are only compatible with the headset produced by
the same company.

Controllers offer more possibilities as they allow users

to move around and interact with the virtual environ-
ment. However, more and more frequently, having
proper controllers becomes a requirement and the only
way to fully experience a VR application.
Figure 1. Mini-tutorial describes the possible actions.
The main focus has been put on allowing to:
efficiently choose a product,
look around the product in a comfortable way.

Whats wrong with the controllers? One of the biggest challenges was to find a balance be-
Yet another thing to buy sometimes it is the only tween the speed of objects and the overall user experi-
way to fully experience VR app/game. ence so that users would not feel nausea.

Not always available there are no official control-

lers for every VR headset (e.g. Google Cardboard).

Not for everyone there are many disabled/elderly

people not capable of or with limited hand move-
ments.

Require some free space around so that nothing

and nobody will get hit.

Safety/social acceptance issues a person having a

head-mounted display on loses the awareness of the
real environment around them. Figure 2. View after selecting a single product.

Technology used Conclusion

WebVR a way of bringing VR to a browser.
A-FRAME framework an open-source WebVR
framework for creating VR apps with HTML.
HTML (Jade), CSS (Sass), JavaScript Jade as a tem-
plate engine for HTML; Sass as a preprocessor for CSS.
The idea of using only head movements to navigate and
interact with within a VR world may increase the acces-
sibility of such experiences, especially in public places.
However, the lack of best practices and a clear way of
achieving that kind of navigation which would be effi-
cient, comfortable, and easily to learn for a user, makes
it impossible to state an optimal solution.