Step aside: an initial exploration of gestural input for lateral movement during walking-in-place locomotion

Walking-in-place (WIP) techniques provide users with a relatively natural way of walking in virtual reality. However, previous research has primarily focused on WIP during forward movement and tasks involving turning. Thus, little is known about what gestures to use in combination with WIP in order to enable sidestepping. This paper presents two user studies comparing three different types of gestures based on movement of the hip, leaning of the torso, and actual sidesteps. The first study focuses on purely lateral movement while the second involves both forward and lateral movement. The results of both studies suggest that leaning yielded significantly more natural walking experiences and this gesture also produced significantly less positional drift.