Walking in virtual reality is hard, so 'Lone Echo' got rid of it

First generation virtual reality may have nailed sense of presence, but one major limitation keeps it from feeling truly immersive: Walking. The endless landscapes of the digital world are hampered by the confines of reality -- your playspace is only so big, and if you walk too far in any given direction, you're going to hit a wall. Most games get around this with teleportation mechanics, allowing the player's avatar to jump to far-off locations. Ready at Dawn Studios' Lone Echo took another approach: turn off the gravity, and eliminate the need to walk altogether. Lone Echo casts the player as Jack, an artificially intelligent robot who helps astronauts run and maintain a space station that orbits Saturn. It's the perfect environment for a game trying to sidestep limitations of VR's walking problem: with no gravity, there's no need to walk.