Teleporting & Snap-Turning VR movement options. What do you think?

Snap-turning is useless for me, since I always play VR games with full 360° physical rotation.
That's also a lot more immersive to me, and I've noticed that I have a much easier time navigating VR environments that I've explored using physical 360° rotation than environments I've explored on a traditional flat screen.
And it's healthy! (I guess ;))

On the other hand, I find teleportation very useful, and generally more comfortable than smooth locomotion.
I can deal with both (unless it's a very fast game), but if the option exists I'll likely go for the teleport pretty much all the time.
(Well, teleport + physical movement in my VR space, to be more precise)

Teleporting is alright as an additional movement option, like in The Persistence (or if the game is very cleverly designed around teleporting only). But if snap-turning is a feature with no option for smooth turning, that's a deal breaker for me. I greatly prefer smooth movement and smooth turning.

I prefer teleporting a lot. I honestly thought I'd hate it until I put about 40 hours into Skyrim VR. It honestly didnt break the immersion for me at all and caused 0 nausea

Snap is really disorienting for me. There was a launch PSVR game, Here They Lie, I think, that did snap and a black transition every time you turned. I hated it.

So teleporting for me, at least until they come up with a better solution.

Really dislike teleporting, it works okay in some games like Wilson's Heart I thought it was fine for the type of game that is but my preferred play style is free locomotion with snap turning (and 360 degree turning as an option too when possible in my play space).

Turning on the left stick smooth movement in Doom VFR it messed me up *pretty* quickly. Same with the tight follow camera in Bound. So for a game that's specifically walking around where you can change direction pretty fast I think it's tough to move away from one of those comfort options.

I assume on the PC headsets where you can do 360 turning, you don't really need the snap turning, but it's a necessary evil on PSVR which doesn't let you turn around with your hands still tracking.

I have them so much. I'm not a motion sick guy so I can't speak for most people, but teleporting and snap turning throws me out of the experience so quickly.

The second my movement option becomes a floating line I have to point to teleport makes me feel "Yep, this is just a game, it's just two layers of glass over my eyes"

Now I'm not asking for realistic movement speeds and such, but god damn teleporting ruins an experience for me, ESPECIALLY in multiplayer.

New PSVR owner. I tried playing Skyrim VR with regular turning and it made me feel really sick. I went back to the snap turning and found it much better. However over the last day or two I tried playing Scavengers Odyssey in VR Worlds and it wasn't so bad with regular turning. Haven't tried any teleporting yet. I definitely think having all those options including regular turning are only a good thing for VR games though.

I don't like teleportation but I always use snap turning. Smooth turning doesn't make me sick but it makes me feel weird. Would rather not have the discomfort and snap turning doesn't usually take me out of the experience anyway.

Smooth locomotion is greatly preferred for me.

If it's a game that only allows snap turning then I'm not playing it. If it's teleport only then I'll assess on a case by case basis, it depends on the type of game.

Pretty much the only way I can survive in VR for any amount of time. If not for these options, VR would be unplayable for me.

The snap turning in Persistence actually made things a lot worse for me. I was feeling sick the entire (short) time I had with the demo. Couldn't find a way to turn it off.

Smooth locomotion.

I'm fine with teleportation. I don't think I've ever played a game with snap turning, it seems to be a workaround for PSVR and other non-roomscale setups.

I think anything but 1:1 movement is dumb but, I also understand that I'm in the minority for not experiencing any motion sickness whatsoever, no matter the movement speed or trajectory. For people like me though, I crave the games that let you actually walk around. Here They Lie, though not the strongest game out there, did that, and I felt immersed the entire time i spent with that game. Same for resident evil 7. Things like batman dont live up, in my opinion.

I don't mind more accessibility options, for myself I don't use any comfort option except vignette when turning, you don't see it in the headset and it helps from getting stimulation overload to my eyes.

For me, smooth turning and smooth locomotion is a must. I'm not a fan of teleporting at all.

Not a huge fan of teleportation unless the game contextualizes and is built specifically around it. Budget Cuts for example is a great implementation of it that wouldn't work nearly as well with sliding movement. Otherwise, it honestly can be a deal breaker for me if sliding movement isn't an option. That method just feels less awkward to me even if it isn't perfect.

Snap turning I like because smooth turning is one of the only things that makes me sick in VR. But I rarely need either, because I have a 360 degree set up and can just physically turn when I need to.

I can't do it. I like to be able to move with a joystick if given the option.

I think they are nice as options, but should never be made mandatory unless the gameplay some how demands it(cant envision any game that would demand snap turning though). Dont think I have played a VR game that has those control settings as mandatory. Though I know a couple exist.

I'd rather just have traditional game controls. I don't have issues with motion sickness, so I rather use the best playing nethod and thats almost always smooth movement on everything.

Teleportation is the main reason I have little interest in current VR, it's a huge immersion breaker. "Ok enemy, stand right there for a while as I slowly try and aim this glowing line to point at where I want to be because I can't move my legs", how is that meant to make me feel like I'm in the world? Locomotion is a stupidly hard problem to solve, I completely understand, but if the reality is that the tech isn't there to let us have full 3D movement then maybe VR needs a few more years in the oven.

Symphony said:

Teleportation is the main reason I have little interest in current VR, it's a huge immersion breaker. "Ok enemy, stand right there for a while as I slowly try and aim this glowing line to point at where I want to be because I can't move my legs", how is that meant to make me feel like I'm in the world? Locomotion is a stupidly hard problem to solve, I completely understand, but if the reality is that the tech isn't there to let us have full 3D movement then maybe VR needs a few more years in the oven.

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Most games have full smooth locomotion.

Hard pass. I want 100% puke-inducing free movement. My VR legs are strong.

When it comes to rotation, physical 360 rotation is the clear winner. It's far more natural and immersive. Half-measures seen in PSVR games and forward-facing Rift setups can work totally fine in narrow specific cases, but can never be as effective in general.

Smooth artificial turning is terrible. I don't get strong simulation sickness, but I do feel some discomfort with smooth turning and it seems to be the most powerful way to make someone sick. It's also far less immersive than just moving your head, so limited snap turning (or RE7's recentering) seems hands-down preferable to me. I genuinely don't understand why someone would use smooth artificial rotation even with zero discomfort.

When it comes to movement, I generally agree with this (minus the dealbreaker part):

I KILL PXLS said:

Not a huge fan of teleportation unless the game contextualizes and is built specifically around it. Budget Cuts for example is a great implementation of it that wouldn't work nearly as well with sliding movement. Otherwise, it honestly can be a deal breaker for me if sliding movement isn't an option. That method just feels less awkward to me even if it isn't perfect.

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It takes quite a bit of context to make teleportation not make me feel like a living cheat code (at least in action games), and Budget Cuts succeeds here.

I think the best general-purpose solution, however, is what we see in From Other Suns "Comfort mode": you directly control your character's movement with an analog stick, but your character detaches from your perspective and you actually see yourself "leaving your body", so to speak. When you stop moving or break line of sight, your perspective snaps to your body's new position.

I've always been a Smooth Locomotion and Smooth Turning person.

I absolutely prefer smooth turning and movement, and tend to avoid games that don't have those as options. Having both teleportation and free movement like in Doom and the Persistence is fun, though.

That said I actually didn't mind snap turning and teleportation in Déraciné. It felt kind of appropriate for that particular game.

I'm fine with teleporting if the game is designed around it but if the option is available I always turn on full locomotion. Sliding around doesn't make me feel sick but smooth turning does so I always look to enable snap turning.

VR is still a very new medium and devs are trying to figure out what works best. Teleporting and snap turning have just been the go-to methods because it easily alleviates motion sickness for a lot of people. I'm certain we will see new methods introduced as the tech evolves.

In my experience the best thing VR games can do for now is to have as many options as possible. Things like teleporting, snap-turning, full locomotion, smooth turning, vignette/tunneling, movement direction prioritized by controller or by head, seated play, etc.

Rygar 8Bit said:

Most games have full smooth locomotion.

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Most of the heavily praised VR games (Budget Cuts etc.) seem to have teleportation as a core mechanic (or they're stationary games), and I didn't enjoy it in any that I tried last Christmas.

I don't have VR but teleportation looks tremendously stupid and a complete deal breaker immersion wise. Probably one of the reasons I'm not ready to hop in.

Dealbreaker for me. I've tried both and the snap turning and teleporting just totally breaks immersion for me. I hope no game makes it mandatory (fingers crossed).

I don't need any help, I have my vr legs.
I can see their use. Optional would be best.

It takes a while to establish your vr legs, but for me once I was used to smooth locomotion there was no going back. The teleportation mechanics I find incredibly tedious, and snap turning just feels like a bug.

I can handle analog and trackpad movement, so I prefer those. Feel less cheaty compared to teleporting.

I like them both, but for me, they're only crutches until VR takes a few more steps, technologically speaking. Once high-res and wireless displays with full body tracking become cheap and ubiquitous, I'd rather explore the worlds by physically walking around them.

Did anyone play the Planet of the Apes game with the movement where you had to swing your arms?

Symphony said:

Most of the heavily praised VR games (Budget Cuts etc.) seem to have teleportation as a core mechanic (or they're stationary games), and I didn't enjoy it in any that I tried last Christmas.

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Most of the best VR games like Pavlov, Onward (the biggest MP shooters for VR), Gorn, Compound, Raw Data, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Arizona Sunshine, From other Suns this list just keep going. All use smooth locomotion, and some have it the only means of movement.

Games like Budget Cuts use teleportation well. It feels immersive and fun. Games that just have a standard teleport can still be very good, but would clearly be better with a smooth locomotion option.

Games with the best movement systems so far are Lone Echo / Echo VR and Sprint Vector and I'd also give props to To the Top, Climbey, and The Climb for their climbing mechanics.

I allways preffer "tunneling" thats where movement is free but but the borders are blacked out into a tunnel while you move forward. I find this is the perfect half way house.

I think I've played more games with smooth locomotion activated (if there was an option for both) than with teleportation, but that's not really because I prefer that system. I usually do this for a very strange reason, many games have thumps-rested-on-touchpad locomotion for Vive where you don't have to press any button (or the touchpad itself) and for some reason I found this way of using the controllers the most comfortable for my hands and the mechanically least abrasive way for the controllers, teleportation usually requires a touchpad or button press and I don't want that lol

Anyway, both ways of moving around in VR feel off, teleportation not as much but it makes everything feel static (tho there are variants like dash teleport which feel more dynamic) and exploring doesn't feel as epic using teleportation if you don't ever get the sensation of actual geometry warping around you when you traverse the world.

Smooth locomotion on the other hand just doesn't feel right, even with no motion sickness at all my head instantly tells me "Yo, this not right... go on if you want, but everything here is fake as fuck, man!", takes me a bit out of the immersion everytime!

The most epic and most comfortable way for moving about in a VR game was the constant/linear speed (no acceleration) click and fly movement of To The Top. For whatever reason it doesn't even feel fake to me, it does not feel like flying but I don't get that weid feeling that something is off as with standard fps smooth locomotion.

Kinda off-topic but I'm surprised there hasn't been a Dishonored VR game yet. Seems like one of the few instances where it'd make thematic sense for the player to be teleporting around.

Snap turning works for me.

I think the requirements on the console side have eased somewhat. We have opted for continuous movement at every turn (pun intended). Starting with VEV. As of 2MD we've as of yet had no one complain of significant nausea, and it passed Sony's VR consultation muster to boot. It uses fairly instant acceleration and barely noticeable FOV adjustments. VEV was a more onerous case, but I think we got by by creating comfort options. So, at the end of the day, offering options to select movement to your comfort (if the game design allows) is probably best.

Teleporting and snap turning are disorienting and fucking awful to me, and if any game forces those things, or any other kind of weird unnatural locomotion in an effort to avoid motion sickness, I avoid that game. I want to move with a thumbstick just like I do in a normal game, and I don't want the camera iris shrinking while I turn either. All of that bullshit actually makes me feel uneasy.

Snap-turning w/smooth-locomotion for me as I can feel a bit queasy with smooth-turning (though I haven't given the latter a shot in some time).
Would love sometime to do standing 360 but not with today's wires (waiting for more compact wireless tech to arrive).
Teleporting has always been too abstract and I don't like it at all.

But with practical wireless (or standalone solutions) just around the corner I expect to be 50/50 standing 360 and sitting w/snap-turning.