A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

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MSat
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by MSat »

@STRZ

I had thought about this some more since my last post, so I'll mention them in this one, and also address your points along the way.

Initially, my thought was to provide WASD + yaw control from a single pedal - tilting your foot in any direction would correspond to WASD while twisting it would correspond to yaw. WASD was to actually be a variable input, such as gamepad analog sticks. However, I realized that tilting the foot left/right for strafe control would be quite awkward, and not a very good way to implement it. Since I would want to use this in conjunction with an upper body tracker, or at least hand tracking for weapon decoupling, it dawned on me that strafing might not be necessary under those conditions (which I mentioned in JanVR's Omni thread). Because of this, I figured the pedal would only need to tilt forwards/backwards and twist for yaw. Though some of the comments in the Omni thread brought me to the realization that getting rid of an input that corresponds to strafing might be a bad idea. That led to me thinking about how it could be incorporated again, but not in the way I initially proposed. I haven't settled on a solution, but here are some of my thoughts: as you said, it could use a rotating disk for the other foot. Other options would be a foot platform that slides side to side, ot to simply have regions left and right from center where you can step that would activate strafe. Of course, there's always the possibility to just use an analog stick or buttons on a hand controller. Not yet sure which is best.

Playing around a little with a few variations of a makeshift platform while writing this post made me start to doubt the viability of the end-end teeter I mentioned earlier. It might be fine for seated play, but not for use while standing up, as standing on your toes would get tiring pretty quickly. I still dislike the single-point teeter as it makes fine input difficult, although if does offer the ability to spread the user's weight along more of the foot. You bring up a very interesting point about brining the teeter point closer to the heel - it would actually be more useful for standing than sitting, as more weight is distributed along the back of the foot than the front. Hmmm..

Maybe a non-end-end, but still multi-point teeter could be used to get a mixture of the benefits offered by both designs. I'm going to look into the concept and see how it pans out.
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by STRZ »

Tilting your foot for WASD strafing goes against the movement capabilities of your foot ankle, awkward indeed. Tilting only works up and down. For WASD the only combination which makes sense is the one which follows what your ankle can do, up and down (backwards, forwards) and turning your foot to the side for strafing. It would work mechanically by placing a pedal on a ballbearing combined with a door hinge. For the backwards and forwards movement/tilting the door hinge and the ballbearing for turning your foot to the side enabling strafing. You'd need two potentiometers for this.

When i was searching for a foot mouse, i found a site with a good illustration of the hinge/ballbearing combination:

Image

http://www.dossierd.nl/ap_voetmuis_detail_eng.html

The turning movement for WASD strafing is mirrored by the other foot and the disc/pedal mechanism, only a bit different. To turn your character you press down a pedal, until it makes contact with the disc, and then you would either turn your foot to the side slowly to perform a slow and precise turn within the movement capability of your foot ankle, or if you want to make bigger turns, you press the pedal down, quickly push it to a side and lift it again, the disc would keep on spinning ( and your character turning) until you apply a force on the pedal again to stop it. There would be learning process to muscle memorize the force for pushing the disc for bigger turns, but i think that once you've learned it it would be a huge advantage. The slow turning while having disc contact would be easy though.

Think of it like sliding your mouse on a mousepad to the side and going back into the center position of your mousepad. Only better.

You would need one potentiometer for the disc turning. So in total with the WASD of the other foot for the hinge + ballbearing this would be three potentiometers.

I think whe're pretty close to solve the problem, for me, the main problem is getting the hands free for moving the character around with the feet without compromises, so that you can use your hands for aiming, firing, changing weapons and whatnot, or interacting with objects ingame through a Leap like tracking device. And of course in a seating position or on a kneeling chair for better upper body freedom and the freedom for your feet to move. 3hrs standing with the VR headset on is tough, it's important to have a "lazy" but also high performance alternative getting rid of the limits of analogue sticks. The limit for aiming when using a analogue stick is gone if you have good headtracking and free aiming. But the limit to turn your character would persist. That's what is really driving this idea. It would be a lot of multitasking initially and would require a learning curve to get familiar with using your feet, but once you are used to it you'd have a kickass control over your ingame character even surpassing mouse and keyboard users with the potential to be precise and acurate.
MSat
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by MSat »

Interesting page you found there. The single teeter as used in that design is definitely the simplest, and might be ok for seated use, but I'm not convinced that it would be good while standing. I definitely agree with your reasons why you would want a foot controller, though. I think it could add to the immersion since you're using your legs to control motion - especially while standing, and it would be more intuitive to use than analog thumb sticks, which might be kind of awkward with weapon decoupling.


I'm not sure why you would need to press down on a pedal with your other foot to turn a disk. The way I figured is you would stand directly on a disk that has a neutral position and can twist X amount of degrees left or right - the more you twist, the faster your avatar turns or strafes. Though as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm not sure if a disk is best.. I suppose it would allow for swapping turning and strafing controls pretty easily. It's definitely something that would have to be experimented with to see if it's comfortable and intuitive.
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by STRZ »

MSat wrote: I'm not sure why you would need to press down on a pedal with your other foot to turn a disk.


Because the disc would be for very fine grained motion and is very responsive, you need something like a decoupling for the neutral position to prevent your character from dazzling left and right unwillingly, sorta foot rest. By applying a little force to the pedal you get into the control mode more or less. I thought it would be nice to have 2 pedals of the same kind for each foot. Only that the WASD pedal for the other foot also does up and down movement for foward and backward.
The way I figured is you would stand directly on a disk that has a neutral position and can twist X amount of degrees left or right - the more you twist, the faster your avatar turns or strafes.


I think the relation of amount of degrees = speed is not so good for first person gaming, speed should be related to the speed the disc is actually turning, so by moving your foot quicker or pushing the disc harder you would get more turning speed.

The disc could spin 360° continously, by making contact with the pedal to the disc, while having that contact you could turn your character within the capabilities of your foot, if you reach apoint and want to turn more, you lift the pedal, center it again, or maybe start at the opposite direction and gon on. It's like you would use a mouse for turning with your hand, you have the mouse centered on your mousepad, or maybe at the border of the mousepad, and then slide it over to the other side to turn your character ingame, once you reach the limit (end of the mousepad) you would lift the mouse quickly, center it again and go on. But you also have the option to make a short contact and just push the disc into a direction and let it spin for itself until you stop it when you reach your desired position.
Though as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm not sure if a disk is best.. I suppose it would allow for swapping turning and strafing controls pretty easily. It's definitely something that would have to be experimented with to see if it's comfortable and intuitive.
It's not about the disc really, is about using the movements capabilities of your foot for turning. It's like a mouse attached to your foot only for turning your character. But with the bonus of beeing able to push and let it turn for itself if you want. Like i said, if you don't want to recenter your mouse on the "mousepad" a couple of times to perform a 360° or 480° turn, you just push the disc and stop it when you're in position. Think of the pedal part like a sole of a shoe with spring beeing also a foot rest this way.

I don't know why you'd want to swap strafing (sidestepping) and turning, if strafing is already implemented in the WASD of the other pedal. Turning needs more accuracy
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nanicoar
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by nanicoar »

I get what you guys are saying about pressure sensors, but I'll still develop that mobile phone sensor client/server with this application in mind. The software should still be usable for other applications if I get server-side sensor fusion done right.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6fr2UUUuV8[/youtube]

I think/feel foot-targeting force feedback could become a highly immersive experience, even if this incarnation turns out to be impractical. Perhaps it could work with two sandals with spherical bottoms.
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nanicoar
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by nanicoar »

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t0pquark
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by t0pquark »

Something to keep in mind: disorientation occurs when what your brain is seeing, doesn't match up with what it thinks your body is/should be doing. While there will no doubt be a lot of novel concepts to be had for input devices, be cognizant of how your physical actions making that input may be interpreted (or misinterprected) by your brain in relation to the resulting action on screen.
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by nateight »

t0pquark wrote:be cognizant of how your physical actions making that input may be interpreted (or misinterprected) by your brain in relation to the resulting action on screen.
Boy, you said it. A few days ago I was convinced turning should be done with a foot pedal, but after hearing all these reports of joystick-based rotation instantly making people ill I'm not sure what I believe anymore. It may shortly be time to launch a few poll threads to get a better sense of how big of a problem this is for people, whether it's something you can power through or something we need to completely route around for fear of consumer VR not catching on, etc. For the first time I'm actually glad I'm a late Kickstarter backer - I and my bucket stand ready for some pioneering experimentation, but I'm also somewhat relieved I won't have a Rift until after other people have plotted out a few things you should never, ever do. :lol:
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by QUAKE »

Okta wrote:I bought one of these http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-Non-Slip ... 2eac678f86 and an Arduino.

The plan was to wire the mat inputs to the arduino, wear an Android phone on a belt pouch and send the magnetometer readings to the Arduino via bluetooth to resolve the direction of facing so the front pad would always be W etc whatever direction you turned.

Upon reflecting on it, it just seems too unwieldy and you would lose your position on the mat and constantly be groping around for the right pads to push so i haven't carried on with it.
This is exactly what I'm trying to do now, I've 'navigated' with my eyes closed, and found it was rather easy to remain on the pad.
I have the roll-out plastic one, and adding a few marks on it with masking tape helps to 'guide' the feet a little easier in socks.

I'm trying to make my DDR pad 'omnidirectional' based on which direction the player is facing:

Image

What's the best way to get the rift's compass orientation data with an external utility?

Can there be two programs getting info form the tracker?
Because i remember demos not working when the orientation utility is running -is there a way to bypass the fact that the tracker works in exclusive mode?

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to do it with glovepie and a wiimotion plus controller, any coding help on making a compass is appreciated
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

Post by BslBryan »

Resurrecting this thread, I think it's very important to true VR! And it is so so much more satisfying to walk around in the virtual world to control your avatar. My solution is a simple pad made of aluminum foil and wired to an arduino. I walk in place, and turn in place, and hold a ground. When I'd like to stand still, I release my hold on the ground wire and the switch becomes incomplete, stopping the signal.

It's not very advanced, and it needs some work: I can't run, and I can only walk forward in "tank mode" games, games where you're able to move your head independently of your body,

I'd love to figure out QUAKE's solution to that problem in the last post from last year. I originally had a pad that looked nothing like the picture I've attached, but rather more similar to a DDR pad, made of aluminum foil as well. The center was free. The aluminum foil surrounding the center represented W,A,S, and D. However I found that I hardly used A, S, or D. I only had trouble keeping a connection to only the pad representing W while walking around blind and turning consistently in the real world.

I've thought maybe a circle of aluminum foil electrical taped to the ground with a hole in the center, and all mapped to W may work, but it may get confusing as to where you are in the circle, and which way the center is. When you're walking, and you stop walking, but the signal to walk is still going, it really takes you out of the moment. ;)
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Re: A "foot controller" for VR games: could it work?

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