Puru Ojha supervised by Dr. Raghu Babu Reddy Y  received his Master of Science  in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). Here’s a summary of his research work on Beyond the walls: Designing and Evaluating the impact of Overlapping Environments inVirtual Reality:

The profound immersion offered by natural walking in Virtual Reality (VR) is frequently constrained by the limited physical space available to users, hindering the exploration of expansive virtual environments. While various locomotion techniques aim to address this ”room-scale constraint,” they often introduce compromises such as reduced presence, simulator sickness, or an inability to seamlessly re-visit previously explored areas. This fundamental mismatch between virtual aspiration and physical reality necessitates innovative solutions that extend navigable space without sacrificing user comfort or experiential quality.

 This thesis first conceptualizes the Architecturally Consistent Maze Generation for Virtual Reality (ACMGVR) framework, a novel design for the procedural generation of potentially infinite, multi path maze environments. ACMGVR prioritizes strict local architectural consistency (e.g., right-angled corridors) and supports continuous, multi-directional natural walking, including backtracking. This framework explores dynamic spatial assessment techniques to intelligently reuse physical space, laying the theoretical groundwork for creating vast, explorable worlds within confined footprints.

Building upon these principles, we developed, implemented, and empirically evaluated the Procedural Overlapping Maze System (POMS). POMS employs a collision-driven, node-based algorithm to dynamically generate architecturally consistent maze sections, facilitating continuous natural walking within a reused physical footprint. A rigorous user study (N=34) comparing POMS against a spatially equivalent static maze demonstrated that POMS successfully maintained user experience (UEQ) and presence (iPQ) at levels comparable to the static condition. More significantly, participants navigating POMS experienced markedly lower increases in key cybersickness symptoms—Oculomotor, Disorientation, and Total SSQ scores—a phenomenon termed ”The POMS Effect.”

This research successfully developed an innovative conceptual framework for overlapping virtual environments, translated it into a functional system, and conducted rigorous empirical validation. The findings confirm that strategically designed, dynamically overlapping architectures can not only extend perceived navigable space for natural walking in VR but also substantially enhance user comfort by reducing cybersickness, without compromising core experiential qualities. This work thus offers a validated pathway towards creating more immersive, accessible, and sustainable virtual reality experiences.

July 2025