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Title of the thesis: Exploring movement and dance in virtual reality

Thesis defender: Markus Laattala
Opponent: Assistant Professor Oguz Buruk, Tampere University, Finland
Custos: Professor Perttu Hämäläinen, Aalto University School of Science

Virtual Reality (VR) allows the creation of new types of unique, interactive, and immersive experiences. However, designing for the medium brings its own strengths and limitations. While a player in a virtual world can see and hear anything, their material body's movement is still limited by both their physical capabilities and the space they are in.

Moreover, today's mainstream consumer VR devices still struggle to accurately capture subtle human movements or provide realistic force feedback when interacting with virtual objects. These limitations highlight the need for more advanced interaction methods tailored to immersive environments. The dissertation investigates these types of novel techniques for user movement in virtual environments and explores how motion can be guided in ways that are unique to Virtual Reality.

The dissertation explores different novel VR experiences, focusing on both dance experiences and how familiar movement actions from traditional video games can be reimagined in more embodied forms that suit the physical and technical realities of VR. It aims to solve common problems VR experiences have and highlights unexplored design space for movement-based experiences in VR. It also demonstrates how the medium's technological limitations and non-physical nature can serve as strengths, inspiring more creative approaches to movement design and a deeper focus on user experience in VR. The main contributions of the dissertation are the design insights gathered from the projects as well as the projects themselves that serve as groundwork for future dance-centered and movement-centered games, applications, and research in VR.

Keywords: movement, dance, VR, virtual reality

Contact information: markus.laattala@aalto.fi 

Thesis available for public display 7 days prior to the defence at .