I had a chance to check out a unique concept for VR today, called Turris VR.

My local town has a large art convention going on right now. While I was checking it out earlier, I saw there was a PC with a VR setup. The artist was using a Samsung Odyssey (Windows VR) headset with his project, which I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of.

What he had developed, however, was a bit more interesting;

He took digital scans of the third floor of the building we were in, and was working on completing the second floor. He then wanted to create a VR experience that could be used for individuals who maybe couldn't get up a few flights of stairs (this was an at-one-time abandoned building with no disability accommodations) to give them a room-space type experience where they could explore this full exhibit, without physically needing to go there. This, also, has been done before.

But what I saw that appeared new to me was his idea for handling locomotion in VR, and I was immediately impressed. This could be the solution for motion in VR in games going forward, if handled correctly. The premise is that you wear a sensor on your chest that determines your full range of body motion, and you experienced walking through the environment in a seated position. In order to walk forward, you simply lean forward - to walk back, you lean back. To turn, you rotated your chair to the left or right, and the sensor would turn you in a full range of motion. The further you leaned, the faster you moved. (He later told me that this build had been limited in movement speed, as he had seen maybe 3 people prior to myself with any VR experience, and wanted to avoid motion sickness.)

They had previously tested a concept where you sat on a VR-chair, but this proved to be impractical for most settings.

To me, this concept was impressive - you didn't need to use a controller, you weren't limited to teleporting from point to point, and it successfully decoupled your ability to look around freely yet also move freely. I could continue walking forward, but look and see what was on my right, and vice versa. It's a fucking rad concept, and I think more things in VR should consider trying it.