Flexible Spaces: Dynamic Layout Generation for Infinite Walking in Virtual Environments

Redirected walking techniques enable natural locomotion throughimmersive virtual environments (VEs) that are larger than the realworld workspace. Most existing techniques rely uponmanipulating the mapping between physical and virtual motionswhile the layout of the environment remains constant. However, ifthe primary focus of the experience is on the virtual world´scontent, rather than on its spatial layout, then the goal ofredirected walking can be achieved through an entirely differentstrategy. In this paper, we introduce flexible spaces - a novelredirection technique that enables infinite real walking in virtualenvironments that do not require replication of real world layouts.Flexible spaces overcome the limitations and generalize the use ofoverlapping (impossible) spaces and change blindness byemploying procedural layout generation. Our approach allows VEdesigners to focus on the content of the virtual world independentof the implementation details imposed by real walking, therebymaking spatial manipulation techniques more practical for use in avariety of application domains.