One of "VR" less discussed topics is that it leads to complete situational blindness and people get into various accidents trying to play something virtual on top of actual reality. Just like PokemonGo leads players to trespass and fall when they're absorbed in some fantasy game in their head.
With my Valve Index, when the headset or controllers go near the boundaries of the play space (approx. 1.5ft from the edge for a 9x9ft area), SteamVR will overlay a bright cyan wireframe of what the cameras see on top of the game. For me, this works incredibly well and I've yet to hit my controllers on anything (well, except for clapping the controllers together).
I'd be curious to know if others disable this feature intentionally or if this method of warning the user isn't as effective with everyone (I am very easily distracted by anything popping up). I could see it being annoying for a smaller play space.
(Also, does Oculus/non-SteamVR have an equivalent? I assume it must)
it has, I haven't used an index but for oculus it works pretty well, Im always surprised as how well it remembers the area. Also pretty handy to recenter yourself, you just extend your arms in all directions and if you are near the edge you will see the boundaries. On the quest 2 you can even see through when you poke your head out of the limits and you can see everything around you.
There's an excellent "beta" / experimental feature on the Quest2 that you can double-tap on the side of the headset and it'll turn on pass through mode. This has been immensely helpful to me for recentering myself.
