You're the Camera!: Physical Movements For Transitioning Between Environments in VR

Virtual reality (VR) enables unusual experiences, including the physically impossible, in an immersive environment. As new media such as VR are developed, designers tend to remediate aspects from previous media, but not every aspect fits. Several areas in VR design warrant scientific investigation in that regard. This paper specifically addresses transitioning between environments: when transitioning in a virtual world, will camera movements made simultaneously and in sync with movements from the user produce a preferred scene transition experience compared to virtual camera movement that is less directly coupled? We report on a within-subject experiment where participants were tasked with transitioning between different environments. One set of transitions required the full physical motion of the user to complete, for the other set completing the transition was triggered after a part of the physical movement was performed up to a threshold. Results showed a clear preference for the second variant and thus for less control over the virtual camera.