Room-Scale VR: Immersive Experiences Redefined

Room-scale VR—a specific type of virtual reality (VR)—allows you to move around in your physical environment while simultaneously experiencing your movements in a virtual or simulated world. You are likely seated or stationary when using non-immersive VR programs, experiencing the VR from a fixed vantage point. Non-immersive forms of VR allow you to look around but not naturally walk through your environment. By engaging more of your senses and allowing you to move through your environment, room-scale VR can offer you a more immersive and engaging experience. 

Room-scale VR offers benefits that less immersive forms of VR can’t, although both types do have practical uses in different areas, such as gaming and entertainment, education and training, and prototyping and design. Explore the benefits of room-scale VR, the technology that makes it work, and ways to take advantage of it. 

What is virtual reality? 

Virtual reality is a simulated world that can make you feel like you're somewhere entirely different. Other technologies, like mixed or augmented reality, transpose virtual objects into your real view, blurring the line between what is real and what is not. Virtual reality, on the other hand, gives you the sense of being entirely immersed in a digital world. 

Virtual reality uses different pieces of technology, such as cameras, sensors, and wearable devices like headsets and gloves, to replace senses from the physical world with digital replications of these auditory, visual, and sometimes even tactile or olfactory senses. These digitally produced senses make your brain feel like it's actually in another place.

What is room-scale VR?

Room-scale VR is virtual reality that takes advantage of all of the space in the room you’re standing in. VR experiences can either be room-scale or 360-degree. With 360-degree VR, you appear to be standing in a fixed location other than where you are. In some programs, you can turn your head and look around, but you will need a mechanism, such as a joystick or a controller, to move around in the digital space. Some forms of 360 VR allow you to use a tool to point and click at the area where you want to go. Room-scale VR enables you to move around in your real-world space, creating a more natural walking experience and a more authentic VR simulation. 

The exact amount of space available in your room-scale VR depends on the equipment you’re using. For example, the HTC Vive allows users to move around a square space with a 5-meter diagonal (approximately 11.5 feet by 11.5 feet). Meta Quest and PlayStation VR2 recommend a minimum space of about 6.5 feet by 6.5 feet without a recommended limit. 

Benefits of room-scale VR

Room-scale VR requires more equipment and computational power than seated or stationary VR, but it also offers many benefits that make it an attractive choice. One benefit is that room-scale VR is more immersive and engaging than seated VR. It’s easier to believe you’re walking around a virtual space when moving your body through space versus sitting or standing still. Virtual reality generally feels more realistic when it can provide stimuli to more of your senses.

Room-scale VR also offers more opportunities for fitness and exercise. For example, you could take a VR boxing or pilates class. You can still use stationary or seated VR for exercise and fitness programs, but room-scale VR gives you more space to perform complex or engaging exercises. 

Applied to education and training, room-scale VR can offer you improved retention of information because you feel like you’re experiencing the subject you’re learning about. You might even use room-scale VR to train medical professionals on performing procedures, allowing for the realistic feel of learning at a patient’s bedside without risking making a mistake that injures or harms a patient. 

The technology behind room-scale VR

VR uses several kinds of technology, including tracking systems and sensors, VR headsets, and, in some cases, a VR-enabled PC or gaming console, to give you the sensation of being transported to an alternate place. Although not a form of technology, a proper space for engaging in your VR experience is also essential. Each component plays an important role in creating a realistic experience. 

• Tracking systems: VR systems must track your body’s movements to accurately represent how you would move through a virtual space. This requires sensors, often found in wearable equipment, like headsets and controllers, or sometimes placed around the room where your VR experience happens. 

• VR headsets: The VR headset is the most important part of your VR equipment because it’s the screen through which you view your digital simulation. You can choose from different types of headsets, including self-contained models that don’t require a computer or gaming console, models that work with VR-enabled PCs and gaming consoles, or inexpensive models that work with a smartphone and run smaller VR apps. 

• VR-capable PC or gaming console: Depending on your VR setup, you may need a computer or gaming console to run the VR software you want to experience. If, though, you choose a self-contained headset, you will not. 

• Room-scale VR environment requirements: You will also need the appropriate space for room-scale VR. You should have a space at least 6.5 feet by 5 feet with good lighting and flooring that will be easy to navigate and will prevent slips. 

Use cases for room-scale VR

Room-scale VR can be used in the same ways as stationary virtual reality, but it will likely provide a more immersive and engaging experience. Consider some of the ways that professionals from different industries—including gaming and entertainment, education and training, business solutions, prototyping, and therapy—use VR. 

Gaming and entertainment

Room-scale VR is more engaging, which can help you create more enjoyable games and entertainment experiences. Room-scale VR makes it possible to feel more immersed in game stories or narratives and offers more realistic virtual entertainment experiences for concerts, shows, and more. 

Education and training

You can use room-scale VR in education and training to create more realistic and engaging experiential learning opportunities to help learners retain more information. You can also use virtual reality to provide educational experiences—such as exploring glaciers or walking on the moon—that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve. Medical professionals can even use VR to practice medical procedures in a risk-free environment. 

Prototyping and design

You can use VR to create prototypes and mock-ups for product design, architecture, and more. Using VR simulations, you can create a product that your client, company leadership, or other stakeholders can experience and manipulate in a virtual setting without the cost of creating a physical product. 

Business solutions

Companies and organizations can use VR to solve challenges and improve processes. For example, companies might use VR to conduct virtual market research or focus groups to understand how customers react to their brand messaging. Companies can also use VR for training and development purposes. Using collaboration or social VR tools, staff can hold meetings virtually in a more personal environment than is offered by video conferencing platforms. 

Therapy and rehabilitation

Another way that professionals use VR is to provide therapy and rehabilitation services. This is true in both mental and physical therapy environments. Patients can use VR to attend virtual counseling sessions, making it more accessible to meet with a therapist from home. VR also allows therapists and other mental health professionals to use therapeutic techniques, such as exposure therapy for phobias, that can be complicated to replicate in an office setting. In physical therapy, professionals can use virtual reality to make physical therapy more interesting or tailored to real-life scenarios for focused treatment personalized to a patient’s needs. 

Learn more about virtual reality with Coursera

Room-scale VR makes it possible to create engaging experiences that use your real-world senses to help you feel like you’re fully immersed in an alternate place. Learn more about creating virtual reality experiences and gain valuable VR-related skills on Coursera with courses like Intro to AR/VR/MR/XR: Technologies, Applications, & Issues from the University of Michigan. This course can help provide a solid foundation in the broad array of extended reality technologies. To learn about creating virtual worlds, 3D computer graphics, and interaction design, consider enrolling in the Virtual Reality Specialization offered by the University of London.