Zero-Turn Teleportation: A Locomotion Technique for Seated VR

Teleportation lets users move beyond the constraints of available tracking space while reducing the risk of VR sickness. Where continuous locomotion lets users navigate in any direction, teleportation confines its users to only select a destination within their visible field-of-view. We introduce Zero-Turn Teleportation (ZTT), a teleportation technique that uses a picture-in-picture (PiP) preview of the area behind or beside the user, letting them find and select such destinations without physically turning or virtually reorienting. In a standing evaluation with 19 participants, ZTT substantially reduced head and controller rotation and lowered physical workload relative to regular teleportation, at a cost in targeting accuracy, measured duration, and learnability. Once the time regular-teleport users would need to reorient to their original heading is estimated and added, ZTT is faster overall, though the margin is modest at the conservative end and depends on an assumption about how users return to their starting heading. In an exploratory seated evaluation against teleportation augmented with snap turns, ZTT's duration did not differ from the baseline, but ZTT required more head and controller rotation, and the workload advantage seen while standing did not transfer to a baseline that already minimizes physical turning.