imagine people looking back on videos like this 100 years from now, with their fancy VR setup that can arrange itself into different shapes and textures and solidify and liquify programmatically.
Wow! Putting out more entertainment focused stuff while u work was a great idea. This vid kinda reminds me of stuff from Vox and Kurtsegact. I liked flying through the bite sized looks at all these wild concepts
I like your ideas! Your "shoes" are definitely one of the most promising option and the treadmill you showed in 3D looks great so far. I like the catwalk style ones too but they are always too bulky and pricey. I'm lucky to have a wireless headset and access to a big area that i can run in but i really hope these get better.
@@ВсадникАпокалипсиса-я9е I agree i just worry about the gap between cubes. A quick interlocking mechanism would be ideal so your foot does not suddenly clip through the virtual ground. The demo was slow walking but with running, jumping and strafing the cubes would have to work harder to stay in place.
Omni directional skates with a rail/cage system. So when you're in a video game. U could get shifted as if the ground suddenly broke but all u have to do is reach towards the rail. The rail should also be climbable and have a harness so u don't fall from being shifted by the skates. If The harness had an electric motor u could imitate actual falling by tricking the player into climbing slightly. . I'm not gonna lie. A super deluxe version would be about 13×13×15=H . The skates would also have the be used as climbing shoes on the rail. .
I truly feel a safety harness is still the best way to play, in the case of a power outage or something. The idea of a mat covered in say a hundred track-pad balls with some measure of resistance so it's not like stepping on ice, but the balls aren't so large that you feel how large they are. I'd think that'd work..?
I kind of love the circular robots, that seems the most intuitive to me to move on. It also has the advantage of stimulating gradient change in terrain. Albeit managing the communication and coordination of the robots may be a complex task!
it would have to know where you are going before you do, so yes, complex task (but on the upside, if it works, it could also guess the lottery numbers)
Things I have been thinking of too. VR locomotion is still the big hurdles to immersion. The ideas presented here are interesting though! Moving forward while negating the movement is the idea that I think is the right path. Maybe through this video, more people will bring in more VR locomotion ideas.
Great video and indeed a group of lesser-known VR walking platforms. However, I really needed to laugh at video point 7. I'ts looks a lot like your shoes and you say those shoes don't react/act as well as yours. Yet, yours seem to be the largest of all. Nevertheless, I truely hope you get this off the ground. There is giant potential in VR mobility solutions and you are doing a better job than a lot of others in the world. You have all my respect mister Engineer!
Great video for the vr community. I'll say i did my research and it will be hard if not impossible to come up with something that works and suitable for home use without factoring in the cost.
The deconstructing floor really makes me think of the startrek holodeck. If there are more pieces underneath that have actuators for slopes it would be even better allowing hills. Go one step farther with some kind of stretchable cloth that is pulled just barely above the surface and you have a seamless landscape as well. Granted the cloth idea only really works if we get really up there and start using projectors to map the terrain in front of you like being in the middle of a green screen. But that's more AR stuff. Either way glad I stumbled on this video, cool stuff.
Waoh, that spring thing is similar to one of my designs you are going in the right direction :D good idea on the string omnithreadmill, nice thing. im not so fan of the development of threadmills and vr locomotion as its mainly that is closed source meaning no further development can be applied without having fees attached to it, good try and good luck, you have a friendly open source vr locomotion developer competitor here :3
For the deconstruct/reconstruct method, one idea I immediately had was to use screws of alternating handedness as the floor of the treadmill. It'd function like mecanum wheels in a sense, and allow you to move the user forwards, backwards, left, and right by changing the rotations speeds of the different handedness screws. The hard part would be making it safe while the screws rotate towards eachother to make sure that users don't get hurt by it
Soo coool man! Keep at it! I want to have my vr be just as physically demanding as playing a sport. Pro gamers will be the equivocal of olympians ;). No joke, that's where I personally hope to see VR go whether I make it myself or someone else does. Thanks for sharing! I absolutely LOVE this field!
Wow, I didn't know about anything besides the step in place and omni-treadmills. The shoes look promising with a good support rig. The circular floor concept is really cool too, but I'm not sure if it'll ever be practical unfortunately.
Looks like those sliders hang off the bottom of your foot by some sort of spring to prevent you from putting pressure on the disc, causing it to remain stationary
Great job with your research. Personally having tried a manual treadmill with VR (without VR shoes) I can say it's uncomfortable and dangerous (I need to remove the safety handles and I'm afraid to do it without the handles). In fact, just WALKING and then snap turning 180 could be a good solution if you have enough space for that, and I mean space for at least 10 steps forward. Shoes are a decent solution too, I like it, but they have to be comfortable though. BTW Ekto VR has 4 vive trackers, that alone is 800$ (ignoring all the other components that are probably not cheap either). Anyway, I would think it's better to start with a compact and comfortable design as opposed to starting with a clumsy big design which is easier to do and then downsizing. The downsizing part can get impossibly difficult if the design doesn't really support it. Well anyway, I subbed, keep up the good work :)
Thanks for sharing your experience. Yeah I agree the ekto boots must be really expensive. My design is more complicated and bulkier because I want to support fully omnidirectional movement, but I do see an easy path to simplify it and make it cheaper when the time comes. I guess I just wanted to get the hardest design out of the way first. Anyway, thanks and glad you subbed!
I think shoes are perhaps the only way to give everyone a cheap way to get omnidirectional treadmills. with the right low profile-light-weight hardware, sensors, fine tuning of software they could totally be a competitor to full fledged omni directional treadmills. beating it in cost and lack of play-space needed and potential play-space possible. all it would have to do is detect the force applied to them and the position of the shoe in relation to the center of mass of the player then move accordingly to counteract the movement
Construction in front, destruction behind just seems needlessly complicated and expensive but I do like the elevation changes and I guess it's kinda fun how it resembles the way some games have chunks of level data streamed in and out. I love idea of a motorized platform for each foot, I think they'll be far more likely to become the mainstream solution than treadmills in the next 5 years since they take up so much less space and should be a lot cheaper by then. Whatever wins out I think the answer will be the most practical rather than the most feature rich. I don't see the average person drilling holes in their ceiling or spending 5 minutes strapping in especially if they play with other people and pass their headset around. How I envisage motorised shoes working in 5 years time is maybe have a padded barrier as the safety feature and have the platforms follow the feet using cameras eliminating the need to physically strap in. When you put the headset on the shoes would appear in your vision so you can safely step on, maybe you get a warning when there is 10 minutes of battery left and when there is 5 the platforms will keep following but gradually scale down the game inputs forcing you to stop playing before the batteries run out. What I'd love to see is each foot strapped to a robotic arm which uses its motors to counteract its mass when there shouldn't be any resistance but can apply resistance at any point to simulate elevation changes, failing to walk when a wall is in the way and maybe collisions when you kick something. It would no doubt be as expensive as an omni if not more though and have a similar sized footprint though and be relegated to enthusiast level tech.
Yeah the construction/destruction concept can get really complicated. But I maybe there is a simple way to do it. The issue I see is that either the user needs to drill a hole in something strong, or you need a bulky safety system. I think some sort of safety system is needed regardless of the solution, except for the walk-in-place ones. Padded barriers might be bulky. With the safety harness, I can put it on and couple it to the hook in a few minutes, then it can be put away. It takes up the least amount of space. But maybe you could make a barrier system that shrinks down really easily.
I don't have a lot of issues with motion sickness, so I'm not a good test subject to see if they help. So far I haven't had motion sickness with them, even when I'm going up/down hills. I'm not making these to fix motion sickness. Main reason is to increase immersion and get some exercise. And...it's a fun and challenging project.
If you are going to use the pull up bar design. Make sure you allow for telescoping horizontal movement of the A-frame pipes. That way you can stretch out the pull up bar rig far enough to where your hands aren't going to be hitting the A-frame.
video purpose aside, if your feeling sick, you just need to build up tolerance. play a game like beat saber where you stay still. the moment you feel sick take the vr off. slowly build up tolerance to more physical games until you are free of motion sickness. when I started, i used a fan to help reorient myself in real life. trust me it helps.
Another idea would be the following, I present to you the "VR TWISTERS": imagine that there is a disc, of very little thickness, no more than 20 inches in diameter, made of a material with a very good grip, such as rubber or silicone, that can be placed on the floor and the ability that this disc has is to rotate on itself in a controlled manner, so that depending on the weight of your body, when you stand on it, the disc rotates your body smoothly without you barely noticing it and in the shortest possible time. If a disc of these characteristics existed economically, then you can combine as many as you are able to buy. The use of these discs is as follows. First you choose the largest room you can dedicate to VR, then you create the guardian for that room. A software wizard will ask you how many disks you have. Based on the number of disks and the geometry of the guardian, it will tell you where to place the disks. Usually you will end up with disks in the corners or something similar. Then, during the game, the game software must know not only your guardian but the location of the disks, which is now an integral part of the guardian itself, the trick being that the game at the start asks you to place yourself in a strategic spot in the room and facing a specific location, Tea For God style. Finally you move naturally through the game world, in your physical room, but now the magic happens, the game will arrange the geometry of the virtual spaces in such a way that it will always guide you towards one of your discs (and even to turn voluntarily without stepping on one whenever possible), in any case when you approach the disc you will see it in the virtual world as a blue disc on the floor, you just have to step on it and stay still, no matter the angle at which you enter the disc (the disc of course also has a sensor that knows the angle at which you are stepping on it, i.e. it knows where your heel is and it knows where the tip of your toes is, perhaps thanks to a special insole that you can put in your usual footwear), You will feel almost nothing and the virtual world will not move, it will simply be a 3 seconds wait, after waiting that time you will see the same in the virtual world, (when the disk has finished spinning your body smoothly, it changes from blue to green, the colors are indifferent, but it changes color, so you know you can keep moving forward) in this virtual world nothing will have changed, the difference is that your body now in the physical world will be oriented towards the place in your physical room that strategically better maximizes your freedom of movement in the virtual world. An example to understand the idea is that you could in the virtual world walk in a straight line indefinitely, but without realizing that you are walking from one corner to the other of your physical room, you do not make the physical movement of turning of your own free will, simply every N steps in the virtual world you have to step on the disc on the floor, wait 3 seconds and then continue walking in the same direction in the virtual world. Of course if you cover absolutely the entire edge of your physical playing space with this type of discs, you could move in any direction because you would always reach a disc that is going to turn your physical body in the direction of the center of your physical room. But this would be expensive. The minimum recommended number of twisters would probably be 3, because with 3 vertices the first geometric figure that builds a plane, the triangle, is created. So for this system to compete with the classic omnidirectional platform, the cost of each disk cannot be more than approximately $200, 200 x 3 = 600$ as start kit, or may be $250 is also a good price for disk, of course, if many companies were to create twisters, the unit price of a disk would drop significantly with manufacturing improvements.
I love the idea of the Silvercord Vr setup but, when u look at how much they want for it, it just doesn't work I understand the R&D but, if the cost is too high, for example, they want 1500$ for it that just makes it out of reach. I'm in the process of trying to replicate the Silvercord but, also implement the designs that work well from Kat Walk Currently with all the materials I think I should need it's only going to be around 200-300$ USD, buying the Kat Loco from the movement system should bring it only into the 500$ range.
the shooooes, that's pretty smart. i was just thinking about a solution like that, but I couldn't figure out how certain movements would work. people need to be able to run, and jump.
I like the ideas for thest shoes but they wont have 100% immersion.When you run both of your feet are of the ground for a second which i don't think the shoes can negate.
Hmm. Gotta say, I had 0 faith in those shoes until you mentioned the harness. Now that is an interesting idea. Just need the shoes to be light enough. Can make them as heavy as a boot, but no more than that.
multi directional barring rollers and hard bottom shoes with foot tracking would work. but you'd have to pack them in tight, the only ones ive seen in industrial settings, had gaps of 3 inches. someone would have to reduce that to at max 1/2"
what your basically looking for is an omnidirectional conveyer belt floor that is both pressure sensitive and has the speed and strength to stand up to a human pressing off at running speed and then coming to a full stop. Thats gonna require a dedicated processor for that alone.. You ALSO need a floor / room that is interactive with the vr landscape.. i.e. if theres a rock in vr i need to be able to reach out and find theres a solid object infront of me... i know I AM making it a bit of a AR room.. but in order to have convincing VR your physical environment has to change some. Theres no need for tethers or a harness, if you use laser tracking, the footprint of this would have to be a room... theres no real way around it. You have to be able to have two or three solid running strides and for a larger person like me in less the 4 steps i can cross a room.. We need to start looking at full on AR rooms.. I.E. a Holodeck.
If you're gonna make a triangular rig. Yes, that's the best shape for one. BUT every side needs to be a triangle. Meaning you'd have to make a massive pyramid to avoid it tipping over on the rectangular sides.
Ash, if you watch this Video feel free to reach out. I have a similar concept but I believe it might be the change you need to make this much more possible. I came to this video after theorizing these myself. Thank you google for paying attention to my search history to see if anyone made my product already. Looking at your design I see a very critical difference in our implementation strategy. MY method will require more testing. My degree is in computer science so I am looking for a partner who is more mechanically capable. I work at an electronics manufacturing company in the states and have decent connections for making things move. I am also going to be asking around work to start my implementation from scratch in the mean time.
What about an array of small balls covering the floor, that use two motors apiece positioned at 90 degrees to one another for powered control in all directions. A vision system could detect the user's foot position and power all balls below the foot to continually return the user to the center of the array.
#9. To me, this is the only viable concept for natural human movement. I would prefer a 3m x 3m (or larger) play area to talk around and use teleportation to move out of that area than use a pair of shoes or treadmill that requires me to completely change the way I walk or make me feel like I'm walking on rollers. That said, I doubt a solution like that could accommodate a natural running style.
You need a omnidirectional treadmill to have a good area to have it at instead of just thing that go on your feet and a treadmill like the kat mini is more useful so like of you fall then you'll get cought or if you want to lay down you can do it with a treadmill because it can stop you when you fall.
You can wear a harness with VR shoes just like with a treadmill. And the treadmills I've seen dont let you lay down. And I dont think laying down happens much if at all in VR. Both treadmills and shoes can support crouching if that is what you meant.
You did miss the Holotron. Most haven't heard of it. It's a suit that let's you feel like you're in your environment. You can walk up steps, slopes. Very early prototype stage of course.
I am actually wondering what will the future verify, other than joystick locomotion. The shoes and treadmill have the problem of handling the forces a human being generates while keeping them safe, thus requiring lots of engineering.
I hate teleportation in VR games. I always turn on normal movement, and I never get motion-sick. I can’t wait till we get more accessible, cheaper locomotion pads available to consumers!
What about using a ball-bearing system as a treadmill? Something similar to this, but smaller bearings and closer together: /watch?v=2IuCYxvPMlE The bearings could move slower towards the center and faster as they radiate out to the edges to keep the user centered. You might need special shoes with hardened soles on the heel and ball of the foot to prevent feeling the individual bearings, but seems like it would be a lot more versatile than the other treadmill options out there.
I think you are onto something with your string idea, but I don't think that implementation will work. I do have a better solution though. Basically, have corckscrews with alternating orientations that each can be spun. then the even rows can push in one diagonal direction, and the odd ones another. Add some hard shoes that won't be chewed up by the corckscrew, and bam. This is actually way simpler than any previous design I have seen or thought of. My main concern is that it might be a slightly too bumpy experience to be comfortable, but maybe not! I would have to test it.
i think the most natural and cheapest way it would be an elliptical bike with a rotative table under it, or without the rotatory table, just with your joystick to look sideways and just walk, also you can adjust te friction on the discs to make more exercise
I'm sure I am not some brilliant dude that just came up with this idea, but what if we use a computer mouse laser for motion tracking on the under part of the shoe.... they would be super lightweight and as long as you have a slick surface you could move quite easily... ?
Actually there are more solutions, these really dont surprise me, but they are cool its good to know we arent the only ones creating this stuff, and eventually people are going to come together to create and combine their vr gadgets and make an amazing gaming experience whilst still being real and not getting lost in the virtual world.
They already have motion trackers and their coming out with some cheaper one's soon from what I seen in a video recently. If someone really wanted too they could make one of them $1500+ rigs for around $300 with some motion trackers, wood, and plastic. Lol Socks slide easily on plastic especially if it's shaped like a dome.
@@finallyfunctional yeah, the hardest part would be to make a platform you can walk on without falling. Difficult, but if it will save you $1000 I think it would be worth it.
I imagine like the haptic gloves but it's full body and the machine can lift the players.the player do anything they want without knowing that they are levitated in the ground.
Very nice video .In my opinion everything that needs wheals it's not a viable solution as it can take to injuries. I don't even know how to wheal skate. The treadmill option looks the best for me. I i don't understand why the need to walk sideways when you can just turn the camera in game and keep on walking ?XD Heck i might buy a treadmill to try it out. Need to research what components are needed to execute this :). Once again thanks for the video and the info.
Is there some place for affordable omnidirectional wheels? The ones I've found so far on ebay only take roughly 20 kg of load and are quite expensive. Most interesting to me is something like a circular floor combined with a safety harness. But every tile would need at least 3 of such expensive wheels...
I use rotacaster omni-wheels. Only 2in/50mm in diameter and have a 25kg load capacity. $10 each. www.rotacasters.com/products/50mm-omnia-wheels/50mm-95a-durometer/
@@finallyfunctional Thanks for the quick reply! I considered buying a Katwalk C, but after the price rose to 1500$ (and after purchasing a bhaptic x40) I'm more inclined to tinker a (hopefully cheaper) DIY- solution...
Has anyone attempted building a bed of track balls? Basically a bunch of old computer mice upside down (more sophisticated of course) and then use a similar harness to the catwalk tread mills
I’m gonna make a guess the one that wasn’t shown because you think it’s being patented. It’s a disk/bowl. Instead of tracking the shoe it has panels/plates choosing which direction. It would be like a slide mill but reducing the user to have to suit up.
You could be right. I was maybe thinking it was something like an elliptical. I think with any of these solutions you'll need to suit up somehow. It's too easy to fall with slippery surfaces or with wheels attached to your feet, while being blindfolded.
Finally Functional I feel like an elliptical with 360 degrees of movement would not let you have any side movements. I can’t imagine seeing it move without moving your body against something to turn it. I was thinking it was plates like a dance mat idea. It would be removing the Vive trackers on your ankles and less equipment on the user is what I mean. A little less is still enough to make the experience easier for others.
I think the circulafloor design should be changed to a hexagon design. With actuators underneath they could more closely resemble hills and valleys and allow for a more dynamic immersion where there is different terrain in more directions. Also i'd want to see them able to interlock quickly so your foot doesn't get jammed in the gap when you are running, jumping and strafing. And ultimately miniaturize the robots so you are stepping on multiple at once and they can truly replicate uneven terrain. So far the most promising design. Though the maintenance on that many robots might make it hard to market to consumers
i had an idea but haven't done anything with it. a large slippery pad with a slight dome for the base. completely electronics free. 4 poles on each corner with a cable extending horizontally to the player. these cables are kept taunt with springs on each cable is a sensor reading how much force is pulling on that cable (the players movement = force) combining all 4 sensor readings should be able to show a direction of movement and speed.
Stupid question, has anyone ever tried using overturned ball caster rollers as an omnidirectional platform surface? Like a tightly packed grid of them with the ball facing up. The obvious requirement would be to use small enough balls to not cause ankle deflection, and flat shoes. Oh, and a retention setup like a ring or harness. It feels like too obvious an idea to not have been tried, so I'm sure there is a good reason... other than the cost.
A massive hamster ball on rolling balls, that folds away into a matchbox. Will be good when someone fixes this issue, I play mostly sittng down in a good chair that spins easy, as my back hurts standing to too long.
A lot of neat ideas out there. And similar to the roller and ringed roller idea, why not use spheres/balls kind of like a platform of trackballs? I've seen applications like this (with photo eye sensors, granted, but rigging the spheres with sensors couldn't be impossible) in industrial applications. Couldn't you feasibly build a treadmill type platform with a platform of spheres (like roller ball transfer bearings type) with optical sensors, would work functionally the same, but realistically better? Have the kat-walk type system (or whoever you'd like to compare it to) wear shoes, harness up, and you're set on locomotion. If storage is an issue, have a collapsible harness frame and a pop out handle with roller wheels to move it. Bada-bing-bada-boom. Granted, I'm no physicist or scientist or anything. Just an idea. Be curious what other people think of the idea, or why it wouldn't work.
Or... (Duh, me) use the ball bearing type rollers for a bottom of a shoe type platform. For a much more compact design. With a height-adjustable frame or harness stand. Something along those lines.
A platform full of ball transfers or omniwheels could work and I've seen that sort of thing for things like airport conveyor belts. Some issues I see with using ball transfers are that they cannot be motorized, so the platform will be very slippery and feel like walking on super slick ice. Ball transfers are also noisy. I've used them before and the noise they make, even with plastic balls, is annoying. Also you'd need a lot of ball transfers to make a big enough platform, which could get a little expensive. A platform of omniwheels could have multiple motors driving the wheels. The only issue I see is that, again, you'd need a lot of them and it would get expensive. Nevertheless I may try it in the future.
Actually I've seen one motorized ball transfer called a spherical induction motor. But it's really big. I think for an omni treadmill it would need to be much smaller than what is practical with the tech now.
@@finallyfunctional Right, like on a conveyor. But what if instead of being fully motorized you used textured or colored balls (like with mouses and trackballs) for tracking, and then you could use a harness so slip wouldn't be an issue, and then have some sort of rubber platform under the balls that could lower away from them after it has been initialized for play (to make getting on and off a little easier).
@@finallyfunctional I had been thinking of something like a circular platform of ball bearings (on top, bottom and on edge) with some form of dampening with a flexible but strong rubber casing that slides around the disc of bearings. Combine this with trackable shoes so that the platform itself doesn't have to be responsible for the tracking. I picture something akin to the mechanics of those rubber tube things filled with water that can perpetually slide out of your hands. But yeah, now that I see your comment the cost of the bearings would be rather substantial.
