Another way of movment

Unreal Courses Talk
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#1

A friend gets really bad motion sickness and thus has a hard time finding vr games that don’t make him feel sick. Other than games that are “playspace movement” based he found that the method used in the game “gorn” works best for him. You use your hand controllers to pull or push yourself around, like you do when you are learning how to roller skate.

The major con is that it can be tiring to flail your arms around in order to move for a long period of time, on top of the other movements you may need to do within the game. It can also be difficult to move and do additional actions at the same time.

Has anyone else played gorn before or a game that uses a similer movement system? Either way, what are your thoughts on this style, and do you think it should be implemented into more games?

#2

Hi Chandler, I haven’t played gorn, but I’ll check it out. It makes sense that moving your arms would help. I know that I don’t normally think about it, but swinging your arms is a normal part of walking. Its a major part of running/jogging…

One (silly) solution could be to have the player velcro the controllers to their feet and then walk in place. Then of course all game play would be done with the feet. Kicking doors open, kicking shins, maybe a ‘horse counting’ style Morris Code for more advance commands? Could be fun… I could see it working for a soccer (association football) game.

#3

I do think this kind of movement can help with VR sickness, however, it may not be very intuitive. E.g. when Gorn released, there was a loud minority that heavily requested standard trackpad/joystick locomotion.

Another form of push/pull movement is seen in some zero gravity games like Lone Echo or Star Shelter. While it’s not really “skating” like in Gorn, you still push yourself around the environment. This has been positively received by the VR community when I read the reviews for those games.

I’m not sure if such movement style fits in every genre, e.g. in a shooter you’d want to stay focused on your iron sights when leaving your cover, using your arms to move around makes it difficult to aim and move at the same time. However, I think one FPS did try to tackle this (Art of Fight), but I never played it and can’t say if it work well or not.

#4

I created Jogger for the GearVR where you have to jog on the spot to move forward. This limits motion sickness a lot and I’ve had people who can’t normally move in VR be able to play without sickness.

The only negative with this movement method is people don’t play for long as it can get tiring, or you can get hot and fog up the display.

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