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VR locomotion is how you move through a virtual environment: your physical steps may be tracked, or an input such as a joystick or destination selection may move your virtual viewpoint. There is no single best method. Each balances comfort, immersion, available space, and the kind of task you need to do.
What does VR locomotion mean?
Virtual reality locomotion is the set of interaction methods that lets a user travel through or navigate a virtual environment. It describes both the movement input and how the system turns that input into virtual travel. Designing locomotion means balancing naturalness, usability, travel efficiency, spatial reach, immersion, and the risk of VR sickness.
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It helps to distinguish physical locomotion from virtual locomotion techniques. With physical locomotion, your body moves in the real room and tracked steps become steps in VR. Virtual techniques use an interface to create or extend movement in the virtual environment, including travel beyond the physical space available to you.
What are the main ways to move in VR?
A 2017 systematic review by Konstantinos Boletsis grouped techniques into four broad categories: motion-based, room-scale-based, controller-based, and teleportation-based. It examined 36 articles published from 2014 to 2017 and identified 73 instances of 11 locomotion techniques. These categories are a useful way to understand the field, not an exhaustive list of every possible design.
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Room-scale walking
You walk through the physical play area, and the tracking system maps your steps to the virtual environment. This gives a direct connection between bodily movement and virtual travel, but you cannot safely walk farther than your tracked physical space allows without another technique.
Walking in place
You make step-like movements while staying roughly in place, and the system translates them into virtual travel. This adds bodily movement cues without requiring as much floor space as walking across a room. It still asks for physical effort, and how comfortable it feels depends on the implementation and the user.
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Controller or joystick movement
You use a controller input to move continuously through the virtual environment while your body remains mostly stationary. The controls may feel familiar to people who have played games with a joystick, and they let you travel beyond the tracked area. However, the virtual motion is not matched by physical translation through the room.
Teleportation
You select a destination—often by pointing a motion-tracked controller—and the virtual viewpoint moves there. The transition may be an instant visual jump or a rapid continuous movement; selection can also be directed by gaze or head movement. Because a jump avoids continuous optical flow while it happens, reviews describe teleportation as a low-sickness-risk option, not a guarantee that every user will feel comfortable.
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Redirected walking
Redirected walking subtly rotates the virtual environment so that you perceive a straight or otherwise intended route while your physical path curves within the tracked space. It aims to preserve the bodily sensation of walking while accommodating a bounded room. It still requires a safe physical area; it does not make physical-space limits disappear.
How do the movement methods differ?
| Method | What you do | Reach and space | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room-scale walking | Walk physically; tracked steps become virtual steps. | Limited by the available tracked area. | Direct bodily movement, but constrained physical reach. |
| Walking in place | Make step-like movements without traveling far physically. | Can support virtual travel with less floor space than room-scale walking. | Provides bodily cues but requires physical effort; one comparison found high psychophysical discomfort. |
| Controller or joystick | Direct continuous movement with a controller. | Can travel beyond the tracked physical area. | Often familiar to game-controller users, but virtual movement is not matched by bodily translation. |
| Teleportation | Select a destination and move the virtual viewpoint there. | Can reach beyond the physical room. | Fast navigation and no continuous optical flow during a jump, but visual discontinuity may interrupt immersion. |
| Redirected walking | Walk physically while the virtual scene is subtly rotated. | Extends perceived travel within a safe, bounded physical area. | Retains walking cues but depends on tracking space and redirection design. |
These methods can be combined. An application might offer both joystick and teleport controls, or use physical walking with redirection. To understand a particular setup, look beyond the category name: ask what input you use, whether movement is continuous, and whether your body physically travels.
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Which movement method is easiest or most comfortable?
There is no universal winner. Continuous visual movement can create self-motion cues without matching signals from the vestibular system and body, which can contribute to VR sickness for some users. Teleportation avoids continuous optical flow during the jump, but the visual jump can interrupt a sense of continuous presence. Physical walking and walking in place provide bodily movement cues, while controller movement can keep you relatively still.
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When choosing a method, consider:
- Comfort: If continuous visual motion feels unpleasant, try a method that minimizes it, while recognizing that comfort varies from person to person.
- Continuity: Walking methods preserve bodily movement cues; teleportation trades visual continuity for quick repositioning.
- Space: Physical walking needs room to move safely. Controller movement and teleportation can cover more virtual distance than the physical room allows.
- Task and effort: Walking in place requires limb movement; controller movement can leave you mostly stationary. The right choice also depends on what you need to do while traveling and whether your hands need to remain free.
- Familiarity and precision: Joystick input may be easy to learn for people accustomed to game controllers. Teleportation requires destination selection, and its suitability depends on the task and implementation.
Why does VR locomotion matter?
Movement is not just a way to cover distance: it shapes how a VR experience feels and what spaces it can support. A design that is natural and immersive may require more physical movement or room; a design that reaches across a large virtual environment may rely on controller input or discontinuous jumps. Developers therefore choose or combine techniques according to the experience, the user’s comfort, and the physical setting.
Research reviews support these recurring trade-offs, but they do not establish a universal best method, a population-level rate of VR sickness, or how frequently each technique is used in current applications. The evidence cited here includes a 2017 literature review, a 2018 review of redirected walking, a 2019 empirical comparison, a 2020 survey, and a 2025 mini-review of teleportation.
Quick Recap
Sources
- Al Zayer, MacNeilage, and Folmer, “Virtual Locomotion: A Survey,” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2020.
- Konstantinos Boletsis, “The New Era of Virtual Reality Locomotion: A Systematic Literature Review of Techniques and a Proposed Typology,” 2017.
- Konstantinos Boletsis, “VR Locomotion in the New Era of Virtual Reality: An Empirical Comparison of Prevalent Techniques,” 2019.
- Niels Christian Nilsson et al., “15 Years of Research on Redirected Walking in Immersive Virtual Environments,” 2018.
- “Teleportation in Virtual Reality; A Mini-Review,” 2025.
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