How to limit and direct player's view in VR?

Question

We are making a VR game where the player will look at the world through the eyes of his character who sometimes moves on his own, so the player is only observer.

The character will rotate his body on his own and we need to change the orientation of player's camera to look where the character looks. For example, the girl takes his hand and leads her way. It would be very unrealistic if the player's head will be turned 180 from his body and he will walk backwards.

It'll allow us to avoid exhausting head rotations. Is it a good idea to guide his view by force by limiting camera euler angles relative to the direction of the body?

Answer 1

When someone leads you by your hand, your body can't rotate but your head can.

Separate the two interactions of rotating body and rotating head when it comes to the girl grabbing their hand. Make it a prompt for the player to look at the girl directly with both his body and head facing forward before this interaction can start.

Once they do this, lock their body rotation so that he can only look around using the VR and let the girl grab their hand. This maintains the human control needed to limit the Simulation Sickness risk providing the natural head movement, but at the same time allowing being led by the hand to restrict the body movement (like it should).

Answer 2

I think it's best not to force the players viewpoint to do anything. You'd make users disoriented at best and make them sick at worst.

Maybe trying to build some kind of cue similar to what FPS games do when you're taking damage from the side with a red flash on that side of the screen. I think that you could quite easily play on people's natural inclination to look at what they see in their perephrial vision.

Answer 3

I totally agree with @Blue and @Dar Brett about not messing with the player view. Aside from their excellent suggestions, let me add one thing.

Maybe you could preserve the full immersion better if you allow the player to turn her body by using inverse kinematics? Consider that the player model is connected to the hand of the girl and if the player turns the upper body then the arms of the player and the girl are stretched and bent to follow the movement? Maybe even the girl could say something if the player turns too much and ask why she is pullin the wrong way?

As you're using unity I'd personally recommend NOT using the built in IK system for any procedural animations. I have some really great experience using an asset from the asset store, Final IK, if you use that package something like this becomes a lot easier to accomplish.