Can I Get There? Negotiated User-to-User Teleportations in Social VR

The growing adoption of social virtual reality (VR) platforms underscores the importance of safeguarding personal VR space to maintain user privacy and security. Teleportation, a prevalent instantaneous locomotion method in VR, facilitates user engagement but can also inadvertently intrude upon personal VR space, thereby raising privacy concerns. This paper introduces three innovative negotiated teleportation techniques designed to secure user-to-user teleportation and protect personal space privacy, all under a unified small-group development framework. We have designed and evaluated three types of negotiated teleportation techniques: Sector technique for directional control, Distance technique for minimum social distance control, and Area technique for defining circular permissible teleportation areas. These techniques foster a collaborative approach to selecting teleportation points that respect personal space. To evaluate the efficacy of these techniques, we conducted a user study with 20 participants who performed social tasks within a virtual campus environment. The findings demonstrate that our techniques significantly enhance privacy protection and alleviate anxiety associated with unwanted proximity in social VR.