Turn Interaction

Updated: Nov 6, 2025

What is a Turn Interaction?

The Turn interaction allows users to turn on the spot. The Turner Interactor produces an axis value and a state. The TurnerEventBroadcaster decides whether the turn is instantaneous or a continuous motion by reading the values of the Turn Interactor.

By the end of this guide, you should be able to:

Define a turn interaction and its components

Define the essential properties and functionality of the LocomotionTurnerInteractor component.

Define the essential properties and functionality of the LocomotionAxisTurnerInteractor component.

How does a Turn Interaction work?

This interaction, unlike the Teleport interaction, does not need to have any interactables because the interactor does not need to decide which candidate is best. However, it does need to be driven in a similar manner to the other interactors, be a part of an Interactor Group, and have a state.

LocomotionTurnerInteractor

The LocomotionTurnerInteractor component acts as a 1D Axis (from -1 to 1) indicating if a turn should happen to the left or to the right. In order to produce the Axis Value, it reads the position of a transform and checks if the transform moved left or right from the initialization point (when the interactor goes out of Disabled state). The Select state indicates when the turning should happen, while the Axis Value indicates the direction and strength.

Property	Description
Origin	Transform whose offset from the initialization point is measured to generate the Axis Value.
Stabilization Point	The origin offset will be measured along the vector that is perpendicular to the stabilization point to the origin.
Drag Threshold	Max length of the offset in both the left and right directions.
Selector	Indicates when the interactor should select or unselect. Since this interactor doesn’t require interactables, `SelectedInteractable` is always `null`.
Transformer	Used to internally transform the world coordinates to tracking space so the measurements are not affected by the player movement (if any).

LocomotionAxisTurnerInteractor

The LocomotionAxisTurnerInteractor component acts as a 1D Axis (from -1 to 1) indicating if a turn should happen to the left or to the right. In order to produce the axis value, it reads the Horizontal (x) value of an input Axis 2D (like a joystick).

Property	Description
Axis 2D	The input Axis 2D (for example, a joystick) from which the Horizontal axis will be read.
Dead zone	For values bigger than the dead zone, the interactor will go into Select state. Otherwise it will stay in Normal state.

Learn more

To add locomotion interactions, see Create Locomotion Interactions.

To learn about the structure of interactions, see Interaction Architecture.

Design guidelines

Locomotion: Learn about locomotion design.

Type: Learn about the different types of locomotion.

User preferences: Learn about user preferences for locomotion.

Input maps: Learn about input maps for locomotion.

Virtual environments: Learn about virtual environments for locomotion.

Comfort and usability: Learn about comfort and usability for locomotion.

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