Slide Interaction

Sliding is a form of locomotion in which the user smoothly moves over the surface of the virtual world as if it was walking or running in it. In most experiences this is enabled by pushing the controller’s joystick in the desired direction.

Sliding locomotion can be performed by sending a Translation.VelocityLocomotionEventevery frame with the desired direction and speed expressed as the position vector. For example, to move forward at 1 m/s one could broadcast the following event: new LocomotionEvent(Identifier, Vector3.forward * 1.0, LocomotionEvent.TranslationType.Velocity). The LocomotionHandler will receive the event and apply the movement to the player. Keep in mind that the specific implementation of the handler might modify the final outcome, maybe adding or limiting the velocity or correcting the input direction.

The SlideLocomotionBroadcaster already implements the generation of sliding events while including a few extra features to modify the raw input. It can stablish a death zone for the input Axis and also smooth it’s value using a curve as discussed in order to make the movement a bit snappier.

One particularity of Slide as well as StepLocomotionBroadcaster is defining what forwards means. In most experiences this is the direction of the head, but it could also be the direction of the hand, the estimated chest, the world forward direction... The SlideLocomotionBroadcaster references a Transform to be used as the coordinate system for the steps generated, and in addition it also corrects the forward direction when the user aims directly upwards or downwards to avoid noisy signals in the direction.

Notice that unlike Teleport interactions, Sliding is not performed via an Interactor-Interactable pair, as there are no candidates to Hover or Select.