No matter what we come up with there is huge compromise. I dont like the jogging on the spot idea a lot. Aside from it feeling wrong it would be difficult to implement strafing (side stepping) which would be very important for immersion and is a built feature in almost every game that should be taken advantage of with simple key binding just like forward/backward/jump/duck.

How about the harness with an oily/slippery floor surface? You could put down a decent amount of pressure and its simple and cheap as, just a little messy and dangerous I think it could give a lot of tactile feel to running in VR, it would feel all erm...a word i hate....surreal?
The harness should be suspended by a sprung tension. This would help with reasonable foot pressure and make jumping possible
Another problem with the harness is it looks like a wedgie torture device. Are those things designed to 'sit' in like ab sailing? Vertical harnessing might be a bit more tricky/expensive, we need some 'circ du soleil' techs in here

That leaves turning. At this stage i can only think of spinning yourself via an encircling hand rail as part of the frame...lame....

How about this. When I actually stand up and physically strafe at a walking pace, I'm basically crossing one leg in front of the other to accomplish that. Why not use that very intuitive motion to implement strafing? So if you cross your left leg in front of the right and walk in place, you will strafe right. And vice-versa.

Plus if you want to implement a side dodge (as opposed to a continuous sideways strafe walk) you could just do that directly. Just allow a single quick step to the side.

Only if the game doesnt treat mountains as a cascade of invisible walls like Oblivion did.

Sorry, off topic, but Ive followed that series since day one. In Daggerfall you could actually climb. Since then the mountains are just for pretties.

The demos of SkyRim I have seen definitely include a lot of mountainous terrain - not just backgrounds.

What I meant by saying "cascade of invisible walls" was that mountainous terrain wasn't directly traversable in Oblivion and Morrowind. You had to follow paths, which is a bit hypocritical since the game was built in a sandbox environment (except Arena of course). It would not allow you to traverse a steep incline. I wouldn't want to simulate such a steep incline without virtual belay anchors of course.

Ok, how about something more realistic and practical. I know this is going to sound ghetto, but hear me out. Years ago I had a Playstation DDR pad and hooked it up to the PC. I mapped the buttons to the WASD so that if I hopped forward it would walk forward, to the left for strafe, etc. Then I used a P5 glove for camera/gun control and my trusty ESLA shutter glasses on a CRT. Low-fi, I know, but it was actually pretty fun. Now I think this same concept would work, but just needing some more modern tech.



The basic control setup would be like you were standing in a circle about 4 feet diameter. In the middle on the circle is stand still. In the front of the circle (relative to your forward orientation) is move forward. If you go a little further it could run. Back is similar. Left or right (relative to you) would strafe. You could of course move forward and strafe at the same time by going diagonal. To stop again just hop into the middle. I think this is ideal, because it will naturally confine you to a small area, lets say 6' x 6', which anyone can make room in their house for. For more realism, you could walk in place. This could be done with a Kinect, maybe a Wiimote mounted on the ceiling (with IR emitters on the top of the HMD). Even better, with a positional tracker (6/9-DOF) on the HMD this can be implemented without any external hardware with line-of sight issues. I'm not sure, but the Vuzix 6TC tracker may even allow this (have to check the SDK). I know this is not as cool as we would dream, but its something that's available and affordable right know (lets say $150 for the tracker and some blood/sweat).

Hmmm.

All a mater of personal preference, but I think I would rather stick with a little joystick on the gun.

When you walk, you just think "walk over that way" not "move right leg here, then left leg there". It seems like having think about putting feet in right place would lower immersion, not increase it. Especially when you are moving a fair amount anyway, turning, ducking, jumping and leaning.

A cool solution for homebrew software would be to not walk at all. I mean, why walk when you could have a jetpack? I imagine brains could be fooled pretty well when sat lent way back in high fov gear. Ever feel like your moving/floating in bed after a long gaming session or a trip to the theme park? (umm, that happens to other people, not just me, right?) I think I saw something about it on a forum somewhere, perhaps this one, but I cant remember the word I need to search for.

http://flogistondesign.com/chair.htm

I had forgotten you mentioned this a few times before and looking at it now it seems like it would work pretty well.
Just the basic matt mapped to the wasd would be pretty cool. At least you get the notion of movement controlled by the feet, you just need to imagine you are wearing roller skates This would still be better IMO than using the wii nunchuck joystick for movement.

What would be extra cool is if the matt were mapped to go in the direction you press relative to your facing. Just mapping the matt normally would lock you into forward facing all the time without turning, the key binding must spin to follow you if you know what i mean.
The game would require movement keys not bound to mouse look and you might need some led's and a camera to track body/hip facing.

@Okta: Well I was using the dance pad as an example so you guys could see where the idea came from. I think it could be better implemented with positional trackers. Maybe something that was worn on a belt or something. You could also use optical, but I think it would get more complicated. That way the "forward" is always relative to where you are facing. I'm hoping I can do this all with the Vuzix 6TC tracker. They claim its 6-DOF, but that could mean different things. I also wonder about the possibility of hacking the 6TC tracker to work without the 1200VR. You can buy the tracker alone for $130, and the Vuzix SDK it pretty simple from what I recall. But there are also those IMUs from the other thread, so thats not the only option.

I agree with Cyber. Other than the full omni-treadmill solution, I think all the contraptions are going to be large, complex, awkward, and in the end not very satisfying. I think sticking to basics is the better approach. Using your natural body motions, keeping it cheap, and within a confined space is going to be a lot more practical in the end. But I agree the foot sensor pad could be improved a lot.

Some combination of Kinect(s) and/or Wiimote sensors is the way to go. If you just wanted the foot sensor pad concept but have it rotate and align with your body, then probably just an overhead Wiimote would do the trick. The IR solution would also be a lot more forgiving than a physical footpad sensor. You wouldn't have to think very hard about absolute foot placement - just relative direction of motion. The IR would let you drift around the floor and keep your "center" calibrated.

Personally though, I think a more complex interface would also be more satisfying as long as you keep the controls intuitive. Limb tracking via the Kinect opens up a lot of possibilities - assuming you have game support for it. Variable speed walking, variable height crouching, jumping, laying down, arm crawling, dodging, and even strafing could all be mapped to either exact or very similar real life motions. Sure those motions might not be as simple to perform as they are in games now. I would probably throw up if I tried to duck and jump as often as I do in a FPS. But if you want realism - there you have it.

Cyber: Also dont forget that Carl Kenner blocked Glovepie from working with a Vuzix device attached
Just had a thought, run glovepie on a proxy machine and forward commands to the main pc...

Its possible you could lie back on a weight bench type thing, on an incline, with your feet in devices kind of like Novint Falcons, and use that to move. That way you wouldn't have all the weight on the harness (or have to wear a full harness). This would also allow force feedback, so you could feel things. You wouldn't be able to cross your legs easily (depending on setup) but it would probably provide the best sense of realism. A similar arrangement for your arms, like the Novint XIO, would allow you to get force feedback for the arms.
I stole most of these ideas from lawnmower man

Currently, I dont see it as being at all easy to add realistic walking. I'm just going to stick with the stick and gestures etc to move around for now.

I had my first immersive moment last night with my Z800. Am working on setting it up with COD5, and walked into a pylon base and looked up - for a moment, it all looked, and more importantly, FELT, real. Had a couple of other similar moments moving around the forest. I think having the headtracking combined with the gun is definitely helping my immersion, plus I no longer need to turn heaps. I can just look left/right and line up the gun... and turn when I really need to, but now due to the double mice acceleration, I can do a 360 in about 270 degrees.

I've noticed as well that as PalmerTech said in his thread, my body has no idea of its real position. Had several moments where i've taken off the headset and realised i was facing a totally different direction than I expected. I only have the lights off, a full cover hmd would probably be even better.

OT wierd idea - could you design HMD optics, silver dots, mirrors, prisms, etc, so that they reflected the edges of the display screen and wrapped them over the bezel? That way, your black edges would be the same colour as the edge pixels, and quite possibly help immersion significantly over just having a black border. It would be like a budget ambilight system.

Why did Carl do that? There can be no legitimate explanation for what he did. That's unacceptable.

EDIT: On Google, I found a thread from here in which Cyber said Carl and Vuzix had a dispute. What was it over?

Can't imagine it would be too hard to reenable that/noop out that anti Vuzix routine, unless he's put more than usual effort into protecting it...

Carl was also on the verge of obliterating Glovepie because its power usage was destroying the environment....

WiredEarp-- Its not that difficult to just make a mini ambilight system. Did some experiments, it does help immersion, but I'm not very good at programming so never got it working quite right. But that is my own fault for starting from scratch, instead of copying someone elses design.

http://blogger.xs4all.nl/loosen/articles/408184.aspx

EDIT-- I didn't make boblight. Just the same name!

Aphradonis-- He did that because he was banned from the vuzix forums. What I read is that he was banned because he refused to help some guy who wanted to use vr920 to train figter pilots. It's difficult to tell what really happened because someone at vuzix went round deleting the threads.

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2188

I'm not sure if glovepie will work with vuzix gear attatched and just refuse to interact with it, or not start at all with vuzix gear. Big difference if you are using vuzix for display and something else for tracking.

I also read that this restriction will be dropped in the next version of glovepie when he gets round to releasing it.

Omnidirectional motion would be pretty awesome! I am going to be a contrarian, though.

I don't think you will ever get the same sense of immersion from any of these solutions as actually having a huge space to walk around, unfortunately. But hey, hopefully we can get close!

@WiredERP: You should make a thread about bezel enhancement/ambilight systems, I have some stuff I want to post there, and do not want to derail this thread.

I think the CyberCarpet could be made fairly easily, as well. Ideally a large one! I also think that using larger ball bearings would make for looser tolerances, easier maintenance, and much easier construction. Probably somewhere around the size of small marbles? You would want to wear pretty stiff bottomed footwear (Like boots) so you do not feel the rougher texture, but I think it could work very, very well.

@Okta: Ah yes, I know. That is why I am writing my own driver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlfZyRzfVMM

@Aphradonis: Evidently Carl went off on some political rant and that wasn't allowed on the forums (isn't allowed here either FYI). So he got banned and, as retaliation, he dropped support for the VR920. Kinda sucks, but whatever. I should have my mouse-emulator done soon.

The ball carpet would be close to reality, and a large enough omnidirectional treadmill with proper inertia compensation is indistinguishable from reality for walking on flat surfaces. ODTs could also be made inclinable.

Check this new thread of the BF3 sim with this new onmi carpet viewtopic.php?f=120&t=13843&p=65268#p65268

Looks like a possible DIY build.

Wow, I am going to have to watch that episode! Looks like VR is about to get a big push, marketing wise.

I will have to see that treadmill in action more, it looks a lot easier to build. Seems like the software to control it would be pretty tough, though; I mean, what if you decide to turn 45 degrees near the edge of the platform? It would have to reel you in pretty fast before you ran out of space!

They don't show much of the treadmill in action. I would like to see a lot more of it. It looks like it has some limitations but it does appear to the best possibility for a DIY system discussed on this thread so far. Basically 16 independently controlled belts under those horizontal rotating rods. I don't think the software would be near as difficult as the mechanical build however. That's a lot of precision placed moving parts! I wonder if 8 would work almost as well? I love the fact that the center piece is not moving so you have a firm foundation to jump and kneel on. I'm curious to see someone jog or run in a straight line on it to see if there are balance issues. Like Palmer I am also skeptical about the freedom of movement once you get far enough away from the center. I don't think you would be able to run and then turn quickly. For controlled walking it looks like it would work pretty well though.

What's your best guesstimate of the DIY cost? I would guess about 2K.

PS. If you really wanted to get crazy you could mount it on a 2DOF platform to simulate hills.

I think a ball carpet would work better and be cheaper to build. It would also require less space.

I don't like that the center does not move, it is one of the things that makes the software so hard. It needs to somehow be tracking your gait well enough to predict when you are about to step onto it, and try to compensate down to very low speeds as you step onto the plate, and then slowly ramp it back up as you step off the other side.

As far as price, it could be pretty cheap if you somehow got it all right on the very first try. The hard part is the software, and incorporating that into existing games somehow.

The way I envision it, you would not transfer from one roller across the plate to the opposite roller unless your motion stopped. So for example if you walked backward, you would move onto the rear roller and walk in place. Then if you immediately switched direction the roller would just reverse and you would walk forwards in place (still) on the rear roller. Only when you stop moving does the roller gently push you back to the center. I'm sure that's a bit of a simplification. You can probably jump all around and exceed its limitations, but the idea would be to avoid transferring over the center during motion and then return to the center during rest.

The center might actually be helpful because you have a bit of a movement buffer where small non-directional movements (shifting side-to-side, leaning, turning) will not trigger any roller motion. You have to make a really directed and easily detectable movement to get on the rollers and engage them.

Tracking the gait speed seems like the most difficult thing, but I think engaging the proper rollers is pretty straight forward. Plus the system is extendable. I bet 24 or 32 rollers would really smooth things out and allow you all kinds of side stepping action.

The things that might be awkward would be running forward and turning 90 degrees. Also there might be a strange transition as the roller guided you back onto the plate when standing still. It couldn't just push you all the way onto the flat without causing some balance problems.

Thinking a bit more about it... I think even 90 degree turns could be handled reasonable well.

If you walk forward you move onto the forward roller and it matches your speed. Then you turn 90 degrees clockwise and continue walking. At this point the software will try to guide you onto the east roller. It allows you to walk eastward but gently nudges you south just enough to get you onto the east roller. More rollers would allow more subtle angles and give you a smoother transition. It's really ingenious! - in theory. I'm really curious to see it in action more.

It seems problematic to me that the center is immobile. If you were to stop on the side somewhere, wouldn't you trip if they floor tried to push you back into the middle? And if it didn't do this, then you could quickly run out of space.

More rollers could definitely work! But...

The problem with these systems I am figuring out is that the prices scale upwards really, really fast. I mean, sure, 36 rollers would be great! But every single roller segment needs a pretty beefy motor+the custom made roller service. I am going to be very, VERY optimistic, and assume that each motor was a surplus find for $50. Add $15 per motor for the control/power boards (Again, pretty darn optimistic). Now, watching that video, it looks like each segment has about 50 individual rollers, so assume a mere $3 per roller (Which is nothing, considering that each one needs two ball bearing assemblies, one for each end/gearing for movement/tubing/endcaps/etc).

Finally, you need the actual base itself. This is an exercise in optimism, so we can pretend that we built it out of cheap wood and cheap nails for about $100.

$50x16 = $800
$15x16 = $240
$3x50x16= $2400
$100x1 = $100

Total cost, being as optimistic as possible, and getting it all right on the first try: $3540

And the reality is, motors powerful enough to move a person fast enough are going to cost closer to $100, the control and power electronics would cost at least $50, and the rollers would cost a lot more (You could always use less of them, I suppose). Look at how much normal treadmills cost, you cannot get one for less than $250-300, and those are terrible build quality, and the motors typically only go up to 4.5mpg or so, which is average walking speed.

Couldn't we use a belt to pull all the roller in each section with one motor? But to me the biggest problem is space requirement. It's tough to keep the item when not in use or basically I need to allocate a room just for VR.

We all need to learn moonwalking to save cost and space.

For DIY couldn't we just use say 4 of those roller belts, use a bluetooth pedometer to track leg speed. THe way it would work is all rollers are always running a minimum speed, when you step onto the rollers the pedometer information is used to speed up/slow down the rollers depending on how fast you are walking/running and adjusts both the roller speed and the characters speed (walk/run/sprint) in game. the only problem is how to walk backwards? but I think walking backwards on rollers is dangerous at the best of times anyway so maybe backwards movement can be by standing on the edge of the stationary platform with your back to the edge of the rollers somehow that could trigger backwards movement.

this setup would have some problems but should be cheap enough and easy enough to implament for DIY I think.

Palmer's got it right. We're talking about a $5,000 system which puts it on the really high end of DIY projects. Still I think it gets really close to a true omni-treadmill for probaby 1/10 the cost. The flight-sim guys spend similar amounts of cash on their motion rigs so it's within reason for a uber-enthusiast.

mAchine - If we want to get down to a more practical setup, you might be right about the 4-way system - and from there you can simplify it even more. With a 4-way system you can skip all the custom rollers and just buy 4 cheap exercise treadmills. The motors and rollers are already included and you just have to rewire and reprogram the motor controllers. Pretty much the same concept but with a really course angular granularity. Backward/forward and strafe would be no big deal. The main problem would be turning. You would be limited to 4 directions, otherwise you would step in-between two treadmills.

I wonder if you could create a setup where you had just 4 (or even 2) treadmills and a rotating disk in the center. As you turned, the disk would counter-act your rotation to keep the treadmills aligned with your body so as you stepped forward you would always walk straight onto a treadmill. Probably an awkward setup but more affordable at least.

How about we go cheap? Just get a bunch of stainless steel balls and put them in a box on the floor. Looks like you can get around 1000 kilograms of metal balls for around $500 bulk from China:
http://www.alibaba.com/products/bulk_st ... 03869.html

Then all you need is some sort of pod and/or harness which will hold you in place. Seems like the whole setup could be done for under $1,000.

Would that really work, though? I mean, they would probably not rotate all that easily.

Here is what I have been looking at for my build: http://www.vxb.com/page/bearings/PROD/B ... ts/Kit7764

They are ball transfer units, I saw some at the airport in the cargo area floor. Then put a bunch of them in the floor, ball facing up, and you can slide things along them. If you covered an entire flat board with them and used a harness (There is some good stuff here: http://www.rehabharness.com/harnesses.htm), then you could just walk right on top! In fact, if you mounted them in a very shallow dish shape, you might even be able to avoid the harness entirely! I got that idea from here: http://www.woodway.com/performancetreadmills/curve.html I have watched quite a few videos of that treadmill, and it seems that a slight curve would allow reasonable speeds without any need for a harness. Personally, I would want a harness anyways, but only to prevent me from falling if I trip. The goal would be to have no tether.

The cost might get pretty high, it all depends on how large the walking area would be, and how widely you can space the transfer units without feeling the space in between. I think it could be done for under $2000 for sure, though!

Real pity I can't get my job to fund this project, we have too much invested in real-space, time and money wise. Something like this is a totally different direction that nobody wants to take.

Perhaps when you are making hmds cheap enough for 20 or 30 guys to be training at the same time, they will run out of space?

@PalmerTech: You are probably right. The balls by themselves might not work correctly without some sort of ball bearing mechanism. The thing you linked to does look promising. But at $4 a piece, that could get pricey fast. Though I guess not out of reason.

@Bobv5: Not really. If they are training 20/30 soldiers at once, they will be doing squad training, where they need to work together anyways. And this is the military we are talking about, if there is one thing they have, it is space.

@Cyber: You can buy 10 at a time for only $3 apiece, and I just sent in a quote request for 100, 256, 1000, and 3000. I will update when I hear back.

@Palmer
That is an awesome Idea! I think this is the most practical and cost effective soloution for a DIY setup I have heard of so far, so basically the "cyber floor" is passive and the direction is taken from trackers and the speed could be taken from pedometers? no need for complex mechanics or software, and can be done in a relatively small space (possibly small enough to flip it up and hide in a cupboard when not in use)
And I agree with you, even if you can make it safe to walk on without a harness I'd still wear one to catch you if you fall! especially when wearing thousands of dollars of gear on your head/back!

Look foward to hearing about bulk buy prices, I'd be keen to build this setup

That does look simple and promising Palmer.

Simply using pedometers does not give information about direction. In other words you would always be moving forward - no backward movement or strafing. You still need some type of directionality information either built into the floor (tracking bearing movement), built into shoes, overhead IR detection, or maybe limb tracking via something like Kinect.

I wonder if you could paint the top half of each bearing black so that you could visually determine the spin direction of a group of bearings?

Yes you are correct, I did not think of that , left/right turning is taken care of with the aiming device but "WSAD" movement still needs to be accounted for pedometer would only give information about speed (walk/run/sprint)

limb tracking would be essential I think but i'm not sure if you can use more than one kinect at a time (the infrared projector of one kinect might intefere with the other kinect?) also input lag on kinect could be offputting, but you definately can use kinect for this just not sure exactly how well it will work.

All we need to track is the legs to determin weather we are going foward, backwards, or strafing left/right. The problem is we need to track this movement at any angle! which makes the kintect fairly usless without at least 2 preferably 4 of them and som complex code to to combine all the information and determine what the limbs are doing...

I wonder if we strap 2 Wiimotes, one to each leg, if we could write a glovepie script to track the motion of both legs to detrmine WSAD information

Why would a single Kinect not work? From the demos I've seen it appears the Kinect can track body motion from any angle. Watch this guy spin in a circle.



I've seen people doing spin kicks and it tracks that as well. Anyone here have much experience with the Kinect? Does it have severe limitations tracking from a rear view?