PocketStrafe

PocketStrafe
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Information
Type	Standing, Room-scale, Running-in-place
Required Devices	Smartphone
Description	Run PocketStrafe app on the smartphone, place the smartphone in your pocket, run in place to move.
Pros	Unlike other running-in-place locomotion methods, PocketStrafe frees up the hands and the controllers.
Cons	requires smartphone
Creator	Cool Font
Examples	Windlands, AltspaceVR, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter VR

PocketStrafe is a Locomotion Method for virtual reality (VR) in which the user runs in place with a smartphone in a pocket, and the phone's motion sensors turn that running into movement input for PC VR games. It was made by Cool Font, a small American startup from Brewton, Alabama, and consists of a mobile app for iOS and Android plus a Windows companion program, originally called CoolFontWin and later PocketStrafe PC, which receives the phone's data over the local network.

The app was released on the App Store and Google Play on 14 December 2016 at a launch price of US$0.99. Because the phone sits in a pocket rather than in the hand, PocketStrafe leaves both hands free to use motion controllers, which UploadVR identified as the main difference from other running-in-place systems. Cool Font presented it as a way to reduce motion sickness during artificial movement, to get some exercise, and to avoid the cost of an omnidirectional treadmill.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked every dated fact, price, version, name and quote in the new text against the archived Cool Font dev blog, FAQ and home page, the CoolFontWin GitHub repository and release list, UploadVR, Realite-Virtuelle.com, VR Fitness Insider and the arXiv walking-in-place paper. About review dates.

Additional Information

PocketStrafe is a Running In Place locomotion method that uses the smartphone to detect the user's movement. Unlike other running-in-place locomotion methods, PocketStrafe frees up the hands and controllers while the user moves.

PocketStrafe is a mobile app for iOS and Android that connects to a PC through Wi-Fi. The user calibrates it to their own body, puts the phone in a pocket, and runs in place to move through compatible VR games. UploadVR reported compatibility with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive at launch, and Cool Font described the software as working with "Vive, Rift, or any VR system that runs on Windows."

Background

Walking-in-place techniques let a user move through a large virtual environment by making walking-like gestures inside a limited physical space. Cool Font's own explanation of the problem was that gamepad movement often causes motion sickness because the virtual character moves while the player's body does not, that running forward at full speed in a living room is unsafe, and that omnidirectional treadmills are bulky and expensive and do not produce a natural gait. It argued that running in place is close to running forward and noted that coaches and trainers have long used it as exercise.

History

Cool Font was founded in July 2016 by Mitchell McMillan, his brother Malcolm McMillan, and Roy Brown, who knew each other from their hometown of Brewton, Alabama. In an interview with Realite-Virtuelle.com, Mitchell McMillan said he had the idea for PocketStrafe in 2012-2013. He was studying for a master's degree in biology and writing software at the time, had read about "100-Up", an exercise related to barefoot running, and thought of running in place as a way to move in VR after the first Oculus development kit was announced. The team described itself as a small group of friends funding development themselves.

The Windows companion program was developed in the open. Its GitHub repository, created on 30 August 2016, lists beta releases in late October and early November 2016. Beta development in November 2016 added support for using two phones at once, one in each pocket, so that both legs could be tracked; Cool Font said this greatly improved tracking accuracy. On 14 December 2016 the PC program reached version 1.0, which its developer called the first public version. That release added virtual Xbox 360 controller output alongside the existing virtual keyboard and virtual joystick outputs, and moved the settings from a system tray menu into a separate window.

The mobile apps went on sale the same day. Cool Font called US$0.99 a starting price and said it planned to raise it during 2017. By 12 January 2017 the apps had 819 installs across iPhone and Android. Cool Font's roadmap from that date listed manual entry of the PC's IP address and port for the iPhone app, basic support for Android phones without a gyroscope, and a possible move away from the automatically updating Microsoft ClickOnce installer, which could not run with the administrator rights needed to install the virtual gamepad drivers. The company also said the PC program might be renamed to match the mobile apps. The GitHub release list shows version 1.2.0, titled "No more ClickOnce", on 17 January 2017. By mid-2017 the site's FAQ referred to the PC program as PocketStrafe PC.

Realite-Virtuelle.com listed the apps at 1.09 euros in January 2017. By November 2017, VR Fitness Insider gave the price as US$2.99. The FAQ also mentioned a demo version for Android, offered because of the wide range of Android phones. McMillan told Realite-Virtuelle.com that the team hoped eventually to build a wearable that would work without a smartphone, depending on how the community received the app. Commits to the CoolFontWin repository updating its OpenVR dependency continued into 2019 and 2020.

How it works

The phone app reads the phone's internal sensors and detects when the user is running in place. According to the repository's documentation, the PC program receives inertial measurement data from the phones over Wi-Fi through a UDP socket, advertises itself on the local network so the apps can find it, and passes the movement on to games through physical Xbox controllers, virtual gamepads and virtual joysticks. To appear as a joystick or an Xbox 360 controller, PocketStrafe used the open-source vJoy driver; to emulate tracked VR controllers, it injected a DLL into the game and redirected the function calls that read controller input. This meant games did not need built-in running-in-place support: any game that accepts keyboard, generic joystick or Xbox controller movement could be used.

The phone goes in the pocket upside down, with the screen facing the leg, because the tracking algorithm takes the phone's direction of motion into account. The phone has to stay unlocked, and the app keeps it from sleeping. Users can adjust the sensitivity and smoothness of the movement tracking, and can run the app on two phones at once, one in each pocket, which Cool Font recommended as the better experience.

PocketStrafe supported two locomotion modes:

Mode	Behavior
Coupled	The player moves in the direction they are looking. Cool Font described this as the most common form of locomotion in VR games.
Decoupled	The player can run in one direction while looking in another, which allows strafing.

The launch version required iOS 8 or later, Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) or later, and 64-bit Windows. A physical Xbox controller could be used at the same time as running in place.

Compatible games

At release, Cool Font published a list of games it had tested itself, noting that its budget limited testing and that the list was not complete. In its notes for the 1.0 release of the PC program, the company said it expected PocketStrafe to work with most Oculus games that support controller locomotion, but that it did not own an Oculus Rift, and asked Rift users to report results.

Game	Tested setup (Cool Font, December 2016)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter VR	Virtual Xbox controller (coupled) plus Xbox controller
Mervils	Virtual Xbox controller (coupled) plus Xbox controller
The Solus Project	Virtual Xbox controller plus Xbox controller
Windlands	Virtual Xbox controller, vJoy or keyboard, plus Vive controllers
AltspaceVR	Virtual Xbox controller, vJoy or keyboard, plus Xbox controller or Vive controllers
Fated	Virtual Xbox controller (decoupled) plus Xbox controller
The Assembly	Keyboard plus Vive controllers, with the in-game "traditional movement" setting enabled
ProtonWars	Keyboard plus Vive controllers; worked, but the game slowed keyboard movement too much
Dolphin VR emulator	Configurable in several ways
Vivecraft and vorpX	Keyboard plus Vive controllers, with in-game movement set to "Controller movement"

Beta testers also reported using it in Obduction and in Second Life with Project Sansar. Realite-Virtuelle.com reported community tests in Doom 3, GTA VR and Half-Life 2 VR. VR Fitness Insider suggested Doom 3 BFG and Arizona Sunshine as workout titles.

Advantages of PocketStrafe

UploadVR noted that running in place carefully keeps the player from walking into furniture and people, and that it can be a reasonable cardio workout. The article added that physical locomotion of this kind might reduce the motion sickness some users feel when their view moves while their body stays still. VR Fitness Insider covered PocketStrafe as a fitness tool, suggesting players wear a smartwatch or heart rate monitor while using it, and passed on users' advice to turn on the headset's virtual boundary markers for safety. It also described the app as usable with mobile headsets such as Gear VR, Daydream View and Google Cardboard as well as with tethered and Windows VR headsets. Cool Font promoted it as a way to move without buying an omnidirectional treadmill, and UploadVR discussed it alongside such hardware, naming the Virtuix Omni.

Limitations

Cool Font's FAQ said PocketStrafe worked in games that support keyboard or gamepad locomotion, and that support for SteamVR games using tracked controllers was being added. The phone and PC must be on the same local network, and Cool Font's troubleshooting advice covered Windows Firewall prompts, VPNs, games that only accept input from the first controller they detect, and phones that slide around in loose pockets. At launch the Android app did not work at all on phones without a gyroscope.