When using virtual reality (VR) for the first time, nothing is worse than a bad experience for the user – it can put them off the medium for life. As you can imagine, no one fears this more than head-mounted display (HMD) manufacturers such as Oculus, and Oculus have released another dev blog to help prospective VR developers build comfortable, fun experiences.
Oculus’ Chris Pruett works on the Oculus Content team with a large number of VR developers, so he knows the common pitfalls of a poor user experience in VR.
Pruett outlines what he calls the VR Motion Design Fundamentals;
- Don’t accelerate, rotate, or decelerate the VR camera. The vestibular system can feel acceleration and rotation but not fixed-speed linear motion.
- No locking or animation of the VR camera. The camera position belongs to the person inside the headset now. It’s controlled by the movements of their head and neck.
- Limit the amount of “pixel flow” in people’s peripheral vision.
- No judder! Your app must maintain a high and consistent frame rate at all times.
HMD manufacturers and VR storefronts alike want to improve the overall quality of VR experiences. Google was also outlining tips to help build comfortable VR experiences this week.
Pruett goes into much more detail in the full Oculus dev blog, and touches on many techniques that make for better VR experiences, such as Linear Speed, Tunnel Vision, Head Steering, Depth Cue Issues, Tracked Space Size, Polygon Clipping and more. If you’re looking to develop for VR, this is a good place to start.
We’re seeing more and more tools that helps developers move into the VR space – it seems the future is very bright for the industry.
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