SwiVRChair: A Motorized Swivel Chair to Nudge Users’ Orientation for 360 Degree Storytelling in Virtual Reality

Since 360 degree movies are a fairly new medium, creators are facing several challenges such as controlling the attention of a user. In traditional movies this is done by applying cuts and tracking shots which is not possible or advisable in VR since rotating the virtual scene in front of the user’s eyes will lead to simulator sickness. One of the reasons this effect occurs is when the physical movement (measured by the vestibular system) and the visual movement are not coherent. Since most current VR content is advisable to be consumed using a swivel chair, we propose the concept of physically moving the user by rotating the chair with an attached motor. We implemented SwiVRChair by adding a 24V motor and an electromagnetic clutch connected through a timing belt. The magnetic clutch allows the user to still resist and break free of the controls of SwiVRChair without harming the motor. Therefore, we do not try to fully control the user’s view but consider it more as a nudging and an immersing of the user into the scene.

The Concept of rotate: The user is guided through the scene and certain content such as the purpose of the door (Pos. 2) is explained in more detail. In case the user gets bored, they can start turning away from the current content.
The Concept of block: The user is turned away from the monster and only sees its shadow in front of him. The user can either accept this or fight the blockage using his feet to turn the chair.

Video

Contact

Jan Gugenheimer

Dennis Wolf

Enrico Rukzio


Publications

Gugenheimer, Jan; Wolf, Dennis; Haas, Gabriel; Krebs, Sebastian; Rukzio, Enrico SwiVRChair: A Motorized Swivel Chair to Nudge Users' Orientation for 360 Degree Storytelling in Virtual Reality In Proc. of CHI 2016 (SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), Mai 2016

DOI: 10.1145/2858036.2858040

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Gugenheimer, Jan; Wolf, Dennis; Haas, Gabriel; Krebs, Sebastian; Rukzio, Enrico A Demonstration of SwiVRChair: A Motorized Swivel Chair to Nudge Users’ Orientation for 360 Degree Storytelling in Virtual Reality In Adj. Proc. (Demo) of Ubicomp 2016 (ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing), September 2016

DOI: 10.1145/2968219.2971363

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