Patent ID: 7528835

Claim:
An apparatus for controlling the movements of an avatar in a virtual environment, comprising: a gamepad including a first joystick and a second joystick and having a plurality of outputs responsive to user-controlled movements of each joystick and user-controlled buttons; a tracker to provide an open-loop control over a head pose; a processor programmed for running a virtual environment software program including an avatar programmed to move in the virtual environment with a course, heading, and displacement and a control mapping algorithm for mapping the outputs of the gamepad to the avatar course, heading, and displacement, wherein the first joystick is mapped to provide an open loop directional control over the steering of the avatar and the second joystick is mapped to provide an open loop directional control over the offset of the avatar to thereby provide an open-loop control over the course and heading of the avatar, the avatar moves in accordance to a computed situated-heading and the head-pose, wherein the situated-heading is a global four degrees-of-freedom (X, Y, Z, Yaw) describing a translation and orientation of the head of the avatar, the head-pose has six degrees-of-freedom describing a translation (X,Y, Z) and rotation (Yaw, Pitch, Roll) of the head of the avatar relative to the situated-heading, and the head-pose combines with the situated-heading to yield a viewpoint of the avatar that is a global six degrees-of-freedom describing the translation and rotation of the head of the avatar in a virtual world, thereby varying the head-pose separately from the situated-heading to direct the viewpoint without redirecting the avatar's course or heading; and a display for displaying the movement of the avatar in the virtual environment.