I've found this document while lookin at omnidirectional treadmills: it' a 2010 Ph.D thesis about the development of the omniwalker, a passive ball bearing platform, with a very interesting introduction to the main existing locomotion interfaces systems.

Maybe someone else can find this interesting too

http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/fapi/datast ... 9/SOURCE02

Interesting read, I'll pass it on.

I think the idea of using a passive concave dish is the most practical and "economical" way to simulate a real walk.

And maybe the ball bearings are not needed, maybe there can be used cheaper and more reliable cylinders, with increasing lenght from the center to the border of the dish to fully cover the entire surface; and maybe increasing friction from the border to the center so the further the user is from the center and the faster he will slide backwards, without the need to increase the slop towards the border.

There remains the need of a safety equipment to avoid falling down...

Has anyone tested any VR walking systems? I think realistic walking is not currently solvable. Decent HMD's have been arround for a while, just too expensive. A decent walking rig, as far as I am aware, is not available even for military use.

It seems to me that anything that makes you think about how to walk is going to be less immersive than just using a thumbstick mounted to your weapon (or wand, camera, golf club, dustbin, whatever). My plan is to have a VR pod, like the old virtuality systems, at least that way I can move semi free for dodging stuff, without smashing my HMD and face on the wall.

@bobv5: What about this, looks working to me:

So where would you suggest your average person store one of those huge contraptions? It's only as good as it is because of the amount of money EA put into it even for a hobbyist a setup comparable to that would cost a fortune.

Just look at how much treadmill that BF3 setup has compared to say what is easily fitted in any room in your house.

Example:



Even something like this comes off as pricey and it isn't even large enough to sprint on.



There are several different ODTs in development but the type most consumers will have access to for a reasonable price in the short-term won't be anything like what you saw on that BF3 video. That was purpose built with money out of an advertising budget for a blockbuster game from one of the largest gaming companies in the world.

I like ODTs, they are cool but only the rich and the amusement parks will be able to afford a set up like this when you take things like mechanical maintenance costs into consideration. If something breaks whilst you're sprinting on a treadmill, you're gonna have a HMD driven straight into your eye sockets.

Too lazy to find a better video but amateurs have been doing stuff with AR that you just can't do with VR like this:



You're actually better off using augmented reality to reskin existing structures like laser tag warehouses or paintball skirmish fields, the effect is more realistic given you'd actually have to haul ass over crates and through bushes to stay alive in a FPS game like this:


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyCyzB0CedM&feature=related[/youtube]

I don't think cybereality suggested it to be a device for consumer market. He replied to bobv5's message, in which he said he's not aware of a solution for walking even for military use. If I'm not mistaken, the ODT in that video is exactly that.

Ah, I didn't explain myself well. Yes ODT's are available, but I read in a diferent thread that the soldiers said they didn't work properly. My point is that it seems even vast amounts of cash can't solve this problem.

All ODTs have their limitations.

None of them are significantly better than the sensation of simply walking on the spot.

Low cost/low barrier of entry solution drives content development, while niche platforms (ODTs) will help serve the niche enthusaist market.

The good news is that if content is written with walking on the spot in mind, tweaking it for ODT use should not be too hard, unless you are looking for perfect results. Seems to me that perhaps the best way to make an ODT would be to have it function entirely independently of the game, with dedicated hardware for tracking and compensating for the movement of the player.

Is walking on the spot detection going to be supported in the Oculus Rift SDK? Because it should be detectable with the motion sensor information that you have.

Don't waste your next post answering this though, because Namelius is very keen on you announcing something important in your next post (#1337).