The issue of moving immersively within virtual environments and landscapes, without cracking your head open on a physical wall has always been at the forefront of VR work. Fundamentally, there has to be a way to navigate without walking into walls.
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Six degrees of freedom represent total movement. X, Y, and Z axis are the normal three. Pitch, roll, and yaw join them for every possible movement.
Game Law: Everybody Conga?
Remember those old movies with the long conga line in them? Well, imagine that the line is a line of gamers. But some of the gamers can't dance. So, no conga for them. They're just watching their friends have fun while dealing with a frustrated desire to dance themselves. That is what it is like for an estimated 20-25% of the population over the age of 17. This is because these potential gamers have one or more physical or cognitive disabilities. Games and VR worlds do not provide for them, so they cannot participate.
The Wii: Truly a Wanda for Everyone?
 The Nintendo Wii has been out for almost half a year at time of writing. The Wii-mote 3D pointer control coming straight with the system was a massive gamble for the company, and, if it had not taken off, it would have buried the hopes of the VR community, that full immersion systems have any chance of being mainstream.
Tongue Drive Technology
 Tongue drive sounds at first like a strange sexual fetish. That may well be true, but it is also a disability-overcoming interface that has been developed over the past year by the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Tracking Your Fingers with the Wiimote
 By using an LED array made out of cheap to buy LEDs placed in a grid with a hole in the middle for the Wii-mote to point through, some software, and some foil stickers on the fingers, a home-use, very basic multi-point interaction system is born.
In early 2008, the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics researchers developed an omnidirectional treadmill to facilitate unconstrained walking in all directions through large-scale virtual environments.
VR Interfaces: Gyration Air Mouse
 Movea´s Gyration Air Mouse is essentially an updated wand, or 3D pointer. It is hopefully the first of a new breed that works just as well in 2D on the desk, as it does bneing waved about in 3D in the air.
Motus are moving in on the motion sensing capabilities of 3D pointers for home PCs. Inspired by the Nintendo Wii’s popularity, their Motus Darwin, a mainstream 3D pointer, takes a slightly different approach.
The powered shoes VR interface, due to be demonstrated at the 2006 SIGGRAPH conference, is a locomotive platform for virtual environments. The actuating motors the shoes employ actually work to cancel out the movement of the walker - they walk or run and the shoes motor to pull them back to the start position.
Introducing the StringWalker. The StringWalker is basically a VR locomotion sensor, to try to allow unimnpeded natural movement in virtual worlds - without bashing your nose on a physical wall. It uses strings and pulliess for its' unique approach.
One of the great issues with immersive VR has always been allowing natural movement in enclosed spaces. The VirtuSphere looks a lot like a giant mouse ball, or hamster wheel. However, it is perfect for the task at hand - complete freedom in all six degrees.
The Trazer by Cybex Incorporated. Billed as a virtual reality exercise machine, this $6,495 USD (£3,300) machine tracks an infrared belt worn by the exerciser, and uses changes in the position of that, and senses of increase or decrease in heat rate, to determine how much they are exercising.
The Vocal Joystick is a hardware interface for those with severe disabilities such as motor impairments. Provided they can make sounds with their larynx, even if they are not words, the user can navigate a virtual environment, or web page.
The Wanda was the first of the wands/3D pointers, which are essentially mice working in three dimensions, with six degrees of movement. Still around today, Wanda is often the input device of choice for CAVE style VR interfaces.
The Nintendo Wii - formerly the Nintendo Revolution, was formally announced at an E3 2006 press conference. The display screen lit up to a Mario game, with Mario running around, and picking up crates to throw at enemies - and the crate followed the same path onscreen.
The Wii Balance Board is literally as it sounds. It is a small, white board you stand upon, with internal pressure pads in formation, to detect any slight changes in weight as your posture changes on top of it.
Eye tracing, head tracking, devices that monitor the movement of the attention, work out where you would like to focus, and respond.
In a paradigm where overcoming physical constraints is key, a webcam may seem a very odd VR interface device. However, what lays true for one section of individuals, dows not always lay true for another. The PS2’s EyeToy has done much in the cause of using physical body form as an input device.
VR Interfaces: Tongue Drive
 An assistive technology developed by engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, tongue drive is an attempt to bypass the need for brain computer interfaces in motion control for severe disabilities.
Announced just one day after the Nintendo Wii itself, at E3 2006’s second day, the Nintendi Wii light-gun attachment connects directly to the back of the Nintendo Wii-mote immersion controller.
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Motion capture technologies are perhaps the most closely realised technology for putting body language and body expression into virtual environments.
Interfaces > DesIRe
DesIRe is a gesture recognition system designed to aid virtual reality systems interfaces. It works via a variant on MoCap: The user dons a pair of datagloves embedded with illuminated LEDs.
Mazan: Flash of the Blade
 An early commercial electromagnetic tracker system that surfaced in of all places, the arcade machines of 2002.
MoCap for Movement Analysis
 Promising work by QuinteQ on real-time motion capture without excessive hardware, holds promise for MoCap use in public VR.
Real-Time Feedback System for Skiers Opens Possibilities
 The vLink Computer System approach to skiing is rather novel. It's a data collection sensor set that clips to the front of a pair of skis, and in real-time, monitor in real-time forward speed and lateral displacement data of the skis as the skier proceeds down a mountain.
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The Media Vehicle, is a serious take on VR interfacing, however it is not a serious commercial device. The unit is, for lack of a better phrase, an “art tool”. It exists to showcase what is currently possible in 2009, not as a device which expects a practical market.
Where am I? Using Feature Cues for Navigation
 The brain is built to handle such a 3D world, and employs a number of tricks to counter disorientation. These are tricks we can utilise in 3D spatial simulations, to help minimise disorientation there; but first we have to understand what the brain's tricks are, and how they operate.
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