Immersive Virtual Environments (VEs) enable user controlled interactions within the environment such as head-controlled point-of-view and user-controlled locomotion. In the real world people usually locomote by walking; walking is simple and natural, and enables people not only to move between locations, but also to develop cognitive maps, or mental representations, of environments. People navigate every day in the real world without problem, however users navigating VEs often become disoriented and frustrated, and find it challenging to transfer spatial knowledge acquired in the VE to the real world.

In this dissertation I develop and demonstrate the effectiveness of a new locomotion interface, Redirected Free Exploration with Distractors (RFED) that enables people to freely walk in large scale VEs. RFED is the combination of distractors—objects, sounds, or combinations of objects and sounds in the VE that encourage people to turn their heads, and redirection—making the user turn herself by interactively and imperceptibly rotating the virtual scene about her while she is turning her head. I demonstrate through user studies that compare RFED to a real-walking locomotion interface that RFED does not diminish user ability to navigate. I further demonstrate that users navigate better in RFED than with joystick and walking-in-place locomotion interfaces. Additionally, RFED does not significantly increase simulator sickness when compared to real walking, walking-in-place, and joystick interfaces.