NinjaPort: A Multi-Hand Approach for VR Teleportation

Teleportation in Virtual Reality (VR) allows users to instantly move between locations, typically by aiming at a destination with a parabolic ray emitted from a controller and confirming the action with a button press. Recent advances in hand-tracking within Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) have enabled researchers to explore hand-based teleportation, but these techniques often suffer from reduced pointing accuracy and increased effort. To address these challenges, we introduce NinjaPort, a novel, hand-based teleportation technique that allows users to control four virtual copies of their dominant hand with rays, each positioned at a different distance. Users can quickly select a desired teleportation distance by pinching a specific finger on their non-dominant hand, where each finger (e.g., index to pinky) maps to one of the four virtual hands. In our first user study, we explored design parameters to determine the optimal spatial arrangement of the virtual hands. Based on the findings, we refined NinjaPort and conducted a second study comparing it against a commercially available hand-based teleportation method and a research-based alternative. Our findings show that NinjaPort enables more accurate and faster teleportation, with less hand rotation. We conclude with design guidelines for creating effective and user-friendly hand-based VR teleportation techniques.