Meant to be Seen

i think a cheap and easy way for walking in VR (but only in one direction) would be a manual treadmill connectable to a pc. for not falling off you put a barrier behind the treadmill.
To change the direction Leap Motion would recognize a simple hand or finger gesture. Voilà! hopefully someone has the same idea.
i am pretty sure that this would work...

have you TRIED it? I wanna try before i decide against it

when i get a oculus rift and it feels like a walking device is missing i will try it. cause it makes me sick playing games without to move. sitting on a chair is stressful to me. destroys the whole game.
but therefore i have to get more in programming....
health insurances should be interested in treadmills for VR. they could save a lot of money if people begin to burn pounds. there are a lot of people who have spinal or knee injuries duue to their weight

colocolo wrote:when i get a oculus rift and it feels like a walking device is missing i will try it. cause it makes me sick playing games without to move. sitting on a chair is stressful to me. destroys the whole game.

Shortly after the Rift release, I will be releasing a Rift compatible/free-walking system. It will be much more realistic and more immersive than any treadmill system. Here is a very early prototype.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... =60#p73183

the gamerunner:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD57h4pkMB0[/youtube]

for 500 dollars

I don't think most people have a free room to assign as a 'games room'...these industrial ODT's are just too big and expensive to work commercially (except in Arcades). I have developed a prototype that I believe will work (proper walking in all directions) in a small living room space. Now i'm building version 2 of this and then hope to get some interest from companies that could actually turn it into a slick product (i.e make it!).

P.s. I'm new to this forum, signed up as this sites full of people that actually know what an ODT actually is. Hope to post any developments in the future, and its been interesting reading all the other ideas people have suggested.

@Zirkon890: Welcome to the forums. Can you give us a hint as to what you are doing?

@Zirkon890 - I agree that the ODT is not really a feasible commercial product on a large scale in terms of a peripheral that people will want in their homes. I'm not sure what your prototype is using, but I am convinced that the only real viable personal product is shoes with wheels on the bottom that essentially do the same thing as an ODT. I haven't got to prototype phase, but my leading design is having two rotating sets of rubber rollers in each shoe. One at the toe, and one at the heal. They would rotate so that the rollers will point to a designated center point and the rollers speed would vary depending how far away from the center point you are (the further away, the faster the rollers).
The basic idea is in the attached picture. The motors would be on the outside of the shoe to ensure they don't run into each other.

@android78: Wouldn't the rollers need to be motorized as well? If they rolled freely, it would be like walking on roller skates - slippery and ungainly. If they had friction, you would move. It seems like you need the standing foot to actively roll you backwards as you step to negate your forward motion.

I just came up with a whole list of the tick boxes it fills but I think I should really do things in this order:

1 - complete a final prototype (version 1's functionality I like better than any non-military ODT; the refinements in version 2 make it so fine!)

2 - patent in the UK (now i sense people here like people sharing information freely - what do you all think about patents?)

3 - contact companies (I'm thinking of third party peripherals companies who might listen to the little guy).

4 - Post my design on youtube and this forum

5 - ?

Sorry for the non-information (its my second post EVER on any forum so forgive me! I just had to post something about this thing!). Of course only I know it works right now (trust me I've worked in engineering and if something doesn't work properly to me I don't want to know about it - but I'm really excited about this.

Consider these two posts as me just laying the groundwork prior to releasing more info...

@android78 I like your thinking. I think I've seen a few posts on here where people also mention wheels. Obviously its not just a case of putting on some roller blades and having at it (as you know by your picture)...its in how you adapt/reinvent the wheel.

brantlew wrote:@android78: Wouldn't the rollers need to be motorized as well? If they rolled freely, it would be like walking on roller skates - slippery and ungainly. If they had friction, you would move. It seems like you need the standing foot to actively roll you backwards as you step to negate your forward motion.

The two stepper motors are so that you have the roller direction, and the roller motion. It's not a complete engineering drawing maybe this will help:

@Zirkon890 - regarding patent, I'm generally a no patent kind of person, particularly for simple/logical things (like buttons, with rounded corners or pinch to zoom on a smart phone) and think that the world would be a better place with more sharing, and less court actions. If someone sees the information that I put up and is able to use that to make a commercial product, then all the luck to them, but I don't want them making something based on my ideas to prevent me or someone else making a competing product. My understanding is that putting something on a public forum such as this should prevent it from then being patented, although I'm not a patent lawyer.
I'm not sure what the case is if the ideas I post are already patented, I assume the patent is still valid, even if I came up with the same idea without knowledge of the patent. This is the kind of issue that has made me come to the conclusion that patents are generally bad; If I come up with an idea, I believe I should be able to use it, even if someone else has come up with the same idea in the past and then patented it.

imagine this scenario:

1 - You invent a device, you publish that info instead of recieving a patent and ultimately find a local firm to manufacture and sell in local stores.

2 - Then a large company comes along, and makes the design and sells worldwide. You are free to sell your design, but are forced out of the market.

Would that be fair? The big man wins

This is my dilemma. Patenting can only do so much to preventing the above scenario but its something. I agree that simple things like pinch to zoom should not be patents as they are things that could be thought of by most people imo...only novel ideas that in all likelyhood would not have been thought of by others (so the patent serves to act as proof of inventor)...but who decides what can/can't be a patent?....ultimately many things in life aren't straight forward or fair i suppose. I will give my idea a go, and if the outcome is point 2 above at least it means virtual reality, which will be, you know, kinda fun

(not trying to be presumptuous as I think theres a lot of clever folk knocking around here, my idea may be ultimately poor and I hope then others do well)

I respect both sides. But I don't believe I will ever patent anything for the reason given. I also, however, like to share in a public forum with the hope that this would make anyone wishing to try to patent the same would end up with an invalid patent. If someone knows patent law inside and out and wishes to contradict this thinking, I would be interested though.

@android Is the red belt driving the rollers through some sort of gear box? I can't quite envision it. Also, I was rereading the big ODT thread earlier and came to the same conclusion as you, although I wonder if there might be some significant utility in just driving them straight backwards. I declfinitely would love to see somebody do a build.

I just got my WizDish yesterday, only had a couple minutes to try it out at first. Will post my impressions and some pictures of it being used with a Rift within a couple days!

Sounds great Palmer! I have been trying to get in contact with WizDish but they dont seem to answer emails?
Do you know when they are going to start selling products, and the price ?

@Palmertech Sent a PM the other day but its relevant to your post now.

Basically my point was that If you sell a HMD for use with any type of treadmill (or even if its intended that you just stand still) there would have to be some kind of safety system?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Z7QJwcdJmM

This guy shows how a game designed with varying terrain makes you quite unsteady, as I 'm sure you are aware.

If harnesses are too cumbersome then a front facing mini camera on the HMD with a pull cord to allow you to quickly switch back out of the 'matrix'. The pull cord could be attached in such a way that if you begin to fall, the cord is pulled and the image switches to the camera to show you how close your are to smacking your head against the fireplace etc!

@fingerflinger - Yes, the Red belt goes to a gearbox. I have a design that uses a flat differential setup so that the rollers are stationary when the motor driving the red belt is stopped and the motor driving the blue belt is moving, but it is probably too complex for simple tests. The easy way is how I have shown in the attached picture (basically the rollers are fixed at each end to the pulley driven by the blue belt. The red belt drives a disk above it, which has one end driving one end of the rollers with a single intermediary "gear (probably just another roller), and the other end has to have two intermediary gears to reverse the direction.
This setup means that when you want to change the direction of the rollers, but keep the rollers stationary, both motors need to be driven.
Sorry for taking yet another thread off track.

@android78: Interesting design. How much do you think these motors would weigh?

@android

Maybe start a new thread in the research forum? I think this is an interesting idea.

brantlew wrote:@android78: Interesting design. How much do you think these motors would weigh?

about half a kg in total:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/DC-12-40V-10 ... 906wt_1066

Hello guys. As the inventor or the WizDish I'd like to answer your questions. First of all I would like to apologise to Namielus for not replying to his email. We get a lot of enquiries and I try to reply to all, so I'm not sure what happened. Please email me again at julian.williams (at) wizdish.com or add your address here.
This has been a fascinating discussion. As you can see from the videos the action isn't exactly the same as walking. I would say it's very like walking and most importantly feels natural. Thanks to Brantlew for pointing out issues in the early videos that we have worked on extensively since. The purpose had been simply to demo what it could do but the relatively high friction meant the noise and walk action were not perfect at that time. I'm also intrigued by his video and would love to know if his solution would work just as well on the WizDish.
It's not really appropriate for me to comment on the motorized shoe idea, except to offer my encouragement. That's a difficult device to make commercially but crowd-sourcing it could be fun.
You might want to search for patents on the USPTO or UK patent office websites. I think I may have seen something similar but it could be different, abandoned or expired by now. You should budget about $50,000 to $150,000 for each patent you file and as there is no such thing as a 'worldwide patent' add more for each country you want protection in.
Just a quick comment on our design criteria: our priorities were to be able to start, stop and turn with ease and without having to either keep up with the machine or have it keep up with you. Keeping the user in the centre not only makes it safe but means that it performs consistently at all times and whichever way you turn. We are doing everything we can to make it affordable but please understand that it's fairly large compared to other VR devices and doesn't benefit from reusing components from mass markets like mobile phones. However, we are confident that we can make it accessible.
All the best and please feel free to ask questions.
Julian

Thanks for the post. The wizdish is high on my want to try list for sure, i think its the simplest most practical form of ODT i have seen. Any idea when they will be for sale and how much? I would also have to pay shipping to AU which would be a killer.

PS. You might want to check with Neil the site owner, as there are rules for commercial reps.

Thanks Okta

I don't want to break any rules so maybe people could email me their queries? It's quite hard seeing questions being asked and thinking 'I could answer that'

Welcome to the boards Flassan. Sorry if I was critical in my comments, but I do see a lot of potential for a device like this and I am curious to try it out as well - especially if the friction has been reduced. A couple questions - have you implemented independent head and torso direction in your system? If not, I would highly recommend it. It increases the sense of control and environmental awareness. Also, does it require the Kinect or is that an add-on for jumping and ducking.

Hi Brantlew. I don't seem to have authorisation to find Neil's email address to check with him, but as this is answering rather than promoting hopefully he won't mind.

The videos used a Kinect with a fairly simple mod to the SDK sample skeletal viewer program. I can make the C++ code available if anyone is interested. The 'How to use Kinect with any video game' video on the WizDish YouTube channel explains the interface I built. Our intention is to concentrate on the WizDish(TM) and shoes and leave others to provide whatever motion sensing and VR integration they want. There are many ways to do this but I'm particularly fond of solutions that also avoid moving parts such as NUI cameras, although a Bluetooth pedometer might be just as good. The 1/2 second latency doesn't seem such a problem with walk detection, so it may not be as exacting as head-tracking. The Kinect software simply 'presses the forward key' when it detects ankle movement, and sends a 'key up' if not. Direction sensing comes from the head-tracking, as I think you guessed. As the demo used an unmodified off-the-shelf FPS game walk direction, sight and gun aim are all the same. Future games may separate these.

Best wishes,
Julian

I have a WizDish (good to see you on this forum, Julian!) and definitely like the ease of use and the consistency of the device. I am currently fabricating a keypad emulator to be able to use the device in conjunction with a Kinect. Wil keep you all posted.

Hey Jan! Welcome to the forum (I assume you are the same Jan from VRGeeks, no?).

Thanks! Different Jan though, sorry for the confusion (although I follow the VR Geeks forum as well). Guess "Jan" is a very frequent name in Europe. I don't think I have even half of the VR and IT knowledge that the other Jan has...

Ah, OK. Well good to have you on board anyhow.

JanVr, could you say something about the realism? After using it for a while how close is it to actually walking around?

Pros and Cons?

When using the WizDish standalone, without VR setup or Kinect feedback, it feels more like shuffling. However, I've seen Julian's demo from Oxford Venturefest where folks use the WizDish with a Kinect, Vuzix glasses and Crysis, and they seem to be raving about it. Think it might feel much different and better when immersed in a virtual environment. I am working on replicating that demo with a keypad emulator, so that I can experience the WizDish properly. Will keep you posted!

Jan

I would agree. Adding a VR setup does two things. The video matches the proprioception of walking, so wearing an HMD actually helps, and you start to take more confident strides in order to get somewhere in the virtual world.

Could a foot mounted accelerometer measure ankle movement as precisely as a kinect?

Since the feet always move opposite of each other, perhaps only one foot mounted tracker with a magnetometer, gyro, and accelerometer could get both foot movement and turning (since the magnetometer can get you absolute yaw). The absolute foot position wouldn't matter so much as "you move forward when the right foot moves forward and you move forward when the right foot moves backward (because the left foot should be moving forward).

That would be a dream solution with nrp's wireless Adjacent Reality tracker, while halving the price of the body tracker and letting you use the same base station for other trackers (like gun/head tracking).

Can you do any sort of strafing step on the wizdish?

Your feet move just as easily in any direction on the WizDish and you can also step around on the spot. To strafe you might find it intuitive to lean your head left or right while sliding you feet in and out from the center (perhaps I should do a video to illustrate?).
In reality you spend very little time walking backwards and VR should emulate this. As zalo said it's possible that you could indicate backwards moment by which direction your leading leg moves first. I'm right footed and think I always use that first when moving from a start. I'm sure an appropriate grammar will be established. A foot or leg mounted accelerometer should be ok, especially if the rest of the motion detection and game engine are in a smartphone. Otherwise I could envisage pointing a laptop with built-in Kinect at yourself on the WizDish and donning a wireless HMD. Both could remove the need for wires and faff setting it up.

A video would be great. I'm not sure that strafing straight sideways is something that's really natural to do in real life. Just from walking and running around and trying to work out what movements my feet, legs and body make, I think most sideways movements are normally either more diagonal or you twist your body and have your feet moving more forward in the direction they are facing.

Yes, real life strafing is usually just a single step to the side. Sustained "strafing" is typically accomplished by moving forward with your head sideways.

I have heard a few anti strafing comments on here before but i will weigh in and disagree. Strafing is a common and natural movement. Look at any combat sport and you will see lots of 8 direction movement and plenty of sideways strafing which fits in perfectly for games like Skyrim with melee combat. Without proper strafing implementation many of these games will very awkward to the point of almost unplayable.