Teleportation

Teleportation
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Information
Type	Seated, Standing, Room-scale
Required Devices	None
Description	Aim or point at a destination and press a button to relocate there instantly, usually with a short visual transition.
Pros	Intuitive and simple to learn; reduces vection and so reduces VR sickness for many users; needs no extra hardware
Cons	Can break immersion and presence; can impair spatial awareness, orientation, and distance estimation
Creator	N/A
Examples	The Lab, Budget Cuts, Vanishing Realms

Teleportation is a Locomotion Method for virtual reality (VR) in which the user selects a destination, usually by aiming or pointing a motion controller and pressing a button, and is then relocated to that position instantly or over a very short transition rather than travelling there continuously. Because the viewpoint does not move smoothly across the scene, teleportation removes the continuous optic flow associated with artificial walking, which reduces the illusion of self-motion (vection) that contributes to VR sickness. It is one of the most widely used forms of artificial Locomotion in consumer VR and is often offered as a comfort option.

How it works

The user points at a target location, commonly with a controller that displays an aiming ray and a marker showing where they will arrive, and confirms the move with a button or trackpad press. The view then changes to the new position. In a survey of teleportation research, Prithul, Adhanom and Folmer describe it as "the de facto locomotion method for many VR experiences" and note that the "instant viewpoint transition ... does not generate any optical flow," which avoids the visual and vestibular mismatch that produces vection-induced sickness.

Variants

Several variations exist, differing mainly in how the transition is presented and whether the user also controls their facing direction:

• Instant or blink teleportation moves the viewpoint immediately, sometimes with a brief fade to black to mask the change.
• Dash or rapid glide teleportation moves the viewpoint quickly but visibly across the gap, providing some optical flow during the transition. The mini-review by Prithul, Adhanom and Folmer cites dash-style transitions in titles such as Half-Life: Alyx.
• Two-step methods let the user set both the destination and the orientation they will face after arriving, rather than keeping their previous facing direction.

Rationale

The main reason teleportation is used is comfort. By eliminating continuous movement of the camera, it minimises the sensory conflict between what the eyes see and what the vestibular system feels, which is a common cause of cybersickness during artificial locomotion. In a controlled comparison of locomotion methods during maze navigation, teleportation produced the lowest discomfort ratings of the techniques tested, while continuous steering, which preserves optic flow without matching physical motion, produced more sickness. A study by Bozgeyikli and colleagues introduced the "Point & Teleport" technique and reported that it was a usable and well received locomotion method compared with walk-in-place and joystick movement, although adding a separate direction-setting component reduced user satisfaction.

Drawbacks

The same instantaneous transition that improves comfort can reduce the sense of presence, because teleporting does not resemble any real-world form of travel. It can also impair spatial awareness: discontinuous movement gives users fewer of the continuous motion cues used for wayfinding, which is associated with greater disorientation, higher path-integration error, and weaker spatial updating than continuous locomotion. The maze-navigation study found that teleportation, while the most comfortable option, came at the cost of slower navigation and reduced spatial awareness compared with continuous methods. These spatial costs are not necessarily permanent: a four-week study comparing teleportation with joystick locomotion found that spatial memory improved with practice, with the largest gains for teleportation, which began at a disadvantage relative to joystick movement.

Use in games

Teleportation became common on early room-scale VR hardware, where it allowed movement through spaces larger than the physical play area. Valve's The Lab, released for the HTC Vive in April 2016, used controller-based teleportation to let players move around its environments, and the technique was adopted as a comfort option across many subsequent titles. Vanishing Realms, an action role-playing game by Indimo Labs released the same month, is built around pointing the controller and holding the trackpad to choose a teleport destination. Budget Cuts uses teleportation as its core means of travel and integrates it into its stealth gameplay. Later titles often provide teleportation alongside continuous options so players can choose by comfort preference; Half-Life: Alyx, for example, includes a "blink" teleport in addition to continuous and shift movement.