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About the Author: Virtual Insider

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  1. One of the fundamental purpose of VR, to do something that you can’t do in real life, conflict with these devices when they reach a certain level. The more physical requirements that are added to a VR game, the more people are excluded from it. This can affect everything from disabilities to ages to heights, all of which are out of the user’s control. I’ve experienced this with my wheelchair-bound limitations, and I quickly learned to check if a VR game had a “seated” option before I even considered it.

  2. The way I see it or rather, want to see it in VR is every bit of my money should go into the visuals. That's in such dire need of improving, everything else can take a back seat for now.

  3. A simple treadmill that only goes one direction, straight, but you change the vr direction by turning your hips…? Like if you turn your hips to the left the world will shift left until you turn your hips right… moving your hips back to center doesn't do anything… but when you turn your hips to the right or left it will point you in that direction in game.

    Just closing my eyes and trying to think of something more simple that might be cheaper.

  4. I really don’t understand the point of roller and step-in-place locomotion solutions. Like, they’re less precise AND less immersive than normal joysticks. You can’t strafe, you can’t make any micro-adjustments, and you can’t crouch or jump or do anything really.

  5. I don't know why they are making vr treadmills. I have no interest in working out when gaming. I want comfort.
    We need higher resolution & high fov headsets. THAT should be the goal

  6. You can't trust the advertising trailers from all these "developers". These pie in the sky ideas have serious failings that are rarely mentioned by the producers. Also the assumption that in time they will get smaller and cheaper is rarely justified. If any of this stuff was worth it or practical you'd see it being used and talked about by every day users, which we're not. I've been hearing about Dexmo for years but have never seen it used by an average VR user. Things like the Infinideck can't be shrunk down because it would shorten the reaction time of the treadmill and currently you can only really use it if you're moving slowly. The first time you dodge to avoid a lunging Zombie you're going to hit the deck hard.

  7. also, PlayStation is backing a new VR full-body tracking solution called MOCOPI. I'm hoping that, with the release of the PSVR2, Sony is betting hard on this and they'll push developers to integrate their games, since, no matter how good the tech, is the content that pushes consumer adoption.
    and porn
    and VRC

  8. I feel like threadmills have more potential for semi-casual use than people think. They shouldn't take more space than a stationary playspace, so that argument dies right then and there, the only thing that's needed is for it to be cheaper, not rely on special shoes and being able to be stored more easily.

    Don't forget that threadmills would solve most locomotion issues in regards to immersion, motion sickness and how intuitive VR can be to new users.

  9. This reminds me of VRs infancy, where Valve, HTC, Sony and Windows skipped the traditional buttons and analog stick for these awful touchpads, which were so bad for 3D movement. It felt like two steps back desptite having some futuristic VR headset on your head with 1:1 tracked controllers.
    Walking pads/shoes and haptic vests are a dead end. A niche within the niche and just too expensive.
    Full body tracking is interesting and could become a standard, once sovial VR gets mainstream. Hand tracking is fine for some casual and business stuff, but the emersion breaks pretty fast if you don't have any resistance.

  10. Shoes with a optical mouse laser in the soul would work for movement and be extremely cheap. This could work like the cyber shoes or work with the kat walk. Not sure why kat walk doesn't use ball bearings as well. A few dozen tiny ball bearings will make it easier to slide on the mill deck.

  11. I'm excited about where VR is going, and in watching it grow as a medium and being there to experience it. I'm not able to really invest in the continued development of these fields, but I'll at least be there for the ride.

  12. Great video! Here are some more recent VR locomotion solutions. The Freeaim VR Shoes use a similar mechanism to the EktoVR boots, but in my opinion look much better. They're much smaller.

    The Moonwalker shoes, while not for VR now, should be able to be applied to VR.

    StepVR claims to be coming out with a consumer omni treadmill (still costs a few thousand dollars though).

    Marvin Hotz made a seated solution that is sort of like the Cybershoes, but uses turning kind of like the tilt disc, so it takes up less space.

    I've been making my own DIY VR shoes and support rigs for several years. My current setup uses passive VR shoes with either a freestanding or ceiling mounted support rig. I use it frequently and really enjoy it.

  13. Overall this walking and running in VR idea is dumb, nobody wants to be running in VR. You would be completely exhausted in no time. This type of simulator approach to VR is pointless, when the whole point of VR is to escape real world limitations.

  14. I am more into the simulation side, cars, trucks, planes, and spaceships. I am working on a mechanical bull-style superbike/dirtbike simulator. I need pads to do stoppies and wheelies. I found some tumbling pads I plan to have them surrounding it. So far the tough part is the lean return. no forward motion to work with. So, I don't know if I want to put the motor on the tripple clamp to be controlled with the bar input. or put the sensor on the bottom. Plus, the really good bike games are… Not that good, but they look amazing. I am waiting on Preydog, and flat to VR ot get Ride working.

  15. I came acros another locomotion solution – SilverCord VR. But haven't seen anybody talking about them so not sure how legit they are

  16. Full body tracking is never going to work well just using cameras in the headset and controllers. No matter how much it gets refined, it simply can't see what position your entire body is in because your body often occludes itself.

    Too many FBT technology approaches assume that the user will be just standing, and this is a terrible assumption. FBT is actually the least useful when the user is just standing upright. This is similar to what the software assumes when no FBT tracking is present at all, and its guess won't be all that far off from your real position. The further away you get from standing upright, the more useful FBT becomes. Sitting and especially laying down are where FBT tracking really gets useful in a big way, and yet that's where most of these technology approaches just fall on their faces completely.

    It's pretty hard to get around the need to have trackers on your waist and feet. And I think where this goes in the future is just shrinking them until they're small enough to not be awkward and inconvenient to put on and wear. Like if they're just the size of a watch or thin bracelet.

    External sensors (typically cameras) are the only other technology approach I see as viable. These have the downside of only allowing a fixed playspace. But I'm actually surprised that this isn't more developed already. This is a technology that could work very well for full FBT capability right now today. And yet what little development there has been on it seems to only want to use a single camera (like the old Kinect). Which again runs into problems with the body occluding itself or otherwise just not being able to see the position so it screws up when the user tries to sit or anything. The obvious solution is multiple cameras placed for multiple angles. Just keep adding cameras until occlusion is sufficiently eliminated. Why is nobody doing this? Suitable webcams are cheap.

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