SteamVR Play Area Size Stats

[PersonGuy]

A unique requirement of room-scale VR is the physical space necessary to interact with the virtual space. Early developers have asked us what Play Space sizes to target and support, but we've hesitated to make recommendations based on speculative research and surveys. Now we have SteamVR data to share from the first 2 months of Rift and Vive usage!

If you're new to VR, here's the basics for how a Place Space is defined. It's a rectangular area that players keep clear from floor to ceiling and developers keep their required interactive objects within. Room-scale VR requires a minimum of 2 x 1.5 meters, but VR applications may specify a larger minimum required size. Some VR content is designed to scale based on the Play Area size, effectively giving the best experience to players with a large Play Area while still supporting a smaller minimum size. SteamVR also supports Standing-Only VR which is simply defined as a 1 meter diameter circle.

First let's look at the most common specific Play Area sizes used in SteamVR (all units are meters):
18.5% - 1 x 1 (Standing Only)
14.1% - 2.5 x 2
12.4% - 2 x 2
8.0% - 2.5 x 2.5
7.3% - 2 x 1.5
7.0% - 3 x 2.5
6.5% - 2.5 x 1.5

As implied by 18.5% using Standing Only, there are 81.5% using a Play Area 2 x 1.5 meters or larger. And since a larger Play Area supports any smaller Play Area that fits within it, we find it's more helpful to visualize percentage supported at each size in 2 dimensions:

	1.5	2	2.5	3	3.5	4
2	81%	65%				
2.5	62%	52%	28%			
3	33%	30%	20%	9%		
3.5	14%	13%	10%	6%	2%	
4	5%	5%	4%	3%	1%	0.4%

Here you can see that the most popular Play Area size (2.5 x 2) is used by 52%. We've also compared this graph from April to May and see no notable percentage changes.

In conclusion, an 81% majority of Play Areas used in SteamVR meet the minimum room-scale size and more than half of all Play Areas support 2.5 x 2 meters. 1 in 5 support 3 x 2.5 meters, but increasing in either dimension leaves only 1 in 10 or less.

Numbers updated Feb 27th here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/358720/discussions/0/350532536103514259/?ctp=2#c133258092253222557

[erickliewer]

My "play area" is technically on the high end at 2.5 x 3 meters.

However, when playing my Rift, or demoing it to guests, I keep the area of movement limited to 1.75 x 2 meters (the size of the shag rug I bought to act as a tactile-type of chaperon). http://imgur.com/a/71X9e (last two pics). I do this in order to make sure that no matter how I lean or wave my arms around, I cannot run into anything if my feet are planted on the rug (no shoes).

I wonder then if my figures for "play area" should by entered to reflect the total area, or the area the participant actually walks around in.

[carl.kenner]

Originally posted by J0nas98:

Could you release the data for all playarea sizes? I'm specifically interested in knowing how many people have a playarea that's much longer in one dimension than the other (e.g. 1.5m x 4m)

I guess there's probably a way of figuring it out from the table, but I can't figure out how

That's easy... 0% have 1.5m x 4m.

1% have 2m x 4m, and another 1% have 1.5m x 3.5m. Another 2% have 1.5m x 3m.
So in total, only 4% of people have one side at least twice as long as the other side.

[Justiice]

Hey everyone,

actually it seems that no one asked about that, but maybe i got wrong.
Is there someone who knows the "maximum" size of the Play Area ?
Like is it possible to play in a huge room, like 10m x 10m ? :)

[PersonGuy]

The maximum Play Area size is currently limited to 4m x 4m in Room Setup. It's possible to edit the file for larger and the stats show a few dozen people have done that. Here's the biggest lighthouse tracked area I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD4UlShicgY

[Justiice]

Thanks :)

It seems pretty good, and looks working well ^^
If you got more information about editting the file for larger Play Area, i'm interested for any kind of information ^^
Thanks again,

[jashan]

The configuration file is called "chaperone_info.vrchap" and you find it in the Steam config folder. It's a rather straightforward format but I recommend using the "Advanced Mode" of the SteamVR Room Setup and setting up a rectangular space with only four corners to make it easier to understand and edit that file (otherwise, you'll probably have a lot of points in the collision bounds which are not particularly intuitive to edit).

[⎛⎝Duckers McQuack⎠⎞]

2.7x1.5m play area here!

[PersonGuy]

I just checked on these numbers again, 2 months since the initial post. They're all holding very stable. The biggest deviation is 2x1.5 support dropping from 81% to 79%. All the rest have similarly dropped by 1% or less.

[Mr.Stump]

my physically area is 2.25m * 1.85m but "room setup" says me that it's unplayable area because it smaller than smallest possible area... "black boxes" is on 2.05m and 2.25 height in corner. Why i can't use this area?

[bjave]

Good info! FYI there is a KickStarter starting for the end of August 2016 for a VR proximity mat in 24" and 36" which it looks like the 36" would fit the 81% by design. The site is www.ProxiMat.net I've been testing it for about 3 weeks and highly recommend. Tilt Brush and Audio Shield are great choices to use it with...

[severemand]

How do you think - will be this data actual with popularization of VR? There is a lot of factors like VR availability in different countries, local common room sizes, headset prices compared to game prices and local average income. Do you have some comparison of current VR set owners and general audience? It could be important in terms of future audience scaling.

[majstorsky]

HTC released data for playspace of Chinese users, can we get update for steamvr users?

[PersonGuy]

The precentage of 'standing only' spaces increased by a few points during the week that Rift's motion controls came out. I'm not a VR team at the moment, so I haven't been watching it closely. I'll take another look on Monday to see where it ended up.

[PersonGuy]

Alright, we're 8 months from the original post. What's changed? The Steam Hardware Survey shows a stable percentage of Steam users with Rifts attached. However, the number of Rifts playing VR games through Steam doubled in December with the addition of optional motion controls.

The numbers below are from SteamVR sessions in the previous 90 days which includes the activity spikes during Black Friday, Touch Launch, and Christmas. We come up with the same numbers when only looking at sessions from the last 7 days, so they appear to be stable.

3 in 4 support roomscale (2x1.5 or more). Here's the percentage capable of each playspace size in 2 dimensions (see the original post for notes on how these numbers work):

	1.5	2	2.5	3	3.5	4
2	75%	58%				
2.5	54%	44%	23%			
3	25%	22%	15%	6%		
3.5	10%	9%	7%	4%	1%	
4	3%	3%	2%	2%	0.7%	0.3%

And here's the most common exact Play Area settings and their changes since June 2016:
25.3% (+6.8) - 1 x 1 (Standing Only)
13.9% (-0.2) - 2.5 x 2
13.8% (+1.4) - 2 x 2
8.2% (+0.2) - 2.5 x 2.5
7.4% (+0.1) - 2 x 1.5
6.2 (-0.3) - 2.5 x 1.5
5.7 (-1.3) - 3 x 2.5

[Abra]

My old basement was 25' diagonal. Worked perfect!