World Scale VR

New Virtual Reality (VR) headsets will allow users to wander large environments using continuous inside-out optical tracking. This technology opens up the opportunity to see applications spread over large spaces and time intervals, in a World Scale. A user wearing an HMD, may decide to play a game over multiple rooms in their house or even outdoors, incorporating multiple players. In AR a group of workers may wander in a large space and share the same content (through HoloLens). To be able to do so, there is a need to incorporate the information of the real world, both affordances and targets, as well as obstacles and dangers, in a way that will be consistent with the presentation of the experience.

A continuous sensing HMD, will also have an immense value for people of special needs. Ranging from learning locations of needed objects over time, to the better representation of the world (sharp contrast, zooming, audio enhancement, detection of possible dangers, such as approaching cars when an elderly person crossing a street, haptic display, and more).

There are multiple challenges to World Scale VR, some are new and some become more important when in World Scale.

• Real environments have dangers and affordances to the user, whenever the user’s sensing is being limited by additional information there needs to be an alert system to prevent crashes or falls.
• The interaction with other people around the user, both collaborators as well as bystanders will also change.
• Locomotion in real environment AR/VR experiences is also challenging as often times the Virtual Spaces can be larger than the real ones, and users could bump into walls.

A team of Microsoft researchers has joined efforts to explore the systems needed to enable World Scale VR and the new interaction paradigms from an HCI perspective.