Meant to be Seen

JanVR wrote:Holy Chicken: independent gun tracking is in the works. We are indeed generating key strokes now, but "game pad" input is the future way to go (and even necessary when de-coupling viewing from walking, since you don't want to be restricted to 8 walking directions).

The frame rate is indeed an issue. I will have this fixed for the Kickstarter video.

Good to hear, thanks for the responses.

Hi Janvr i was wondering how tall you are as in your running demo in your garage you were sometimes catching your heels on the posts around the 10second mark, is there any way round this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpYJXrDH ... edded#t=9s

@Jan

can you do extended walks on the omni, like 2-3 hours?
and what is the stride like? does it feel like walking an ascent?

JanVR, your latest prototype looks fantastic!

Hey Jan, can you have a tier in your Kickstarter for purchasing 4 Omnis? I want to put 4 Omnis in our office for Left 4 Dead VR tournaments.

Hi K2K, no worries about the posts, as the final product will be slightly different than this prototype (renderings to follow soon).

Colocolo, you can certainly walk for a long time. The Omni is just slightly more straining than regular walking, and less straining than a manual treadmill. I personally don't notice the ascent. Note that you are not "walking up the ascent", rather, your foot slides down from the ascent. Big difference in energy consumption.

Jimbo2go, for multiple Omni orders, PM me

k2k wrote:Hi Janvr i was wondering how tall you are as in your running demo in your garage you were sometimes catching your heels on the posts around the 10second mark, is there any way round this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpYJXrDH ... edded#t=9s

Yes that is what I was asking in my post....
Thanks for the reply JanVr, I have been wondering about that for a while.

wow, almost half million views.
it seems that people are looking for the perfect fitness device on youtube.

Hi JanVR

Could you somehow integrate a calorie counter, or maybe distance into the drivers for the Omni? I think most of us will use this thing to burn some calories too.

I also think it will sell much more if you actively use exercise as one of the reasons to buy this. Remember that the Wii fitness board sold millions.

Could you suspend the bowl in some rubber dampers to reduce sound and vibration getting to the floor? If the bowl itself is also dampened, it should be much more silent. I think this is important.

Parallaxis wrote:Hi JanVR

Could you somehow integrate a calorie counter, or maybe distance into the drivers for the Omni? I think most of us will use this thing to burn some calories too.

I also think it will sell much more if you actively use exercise as one of the reasons to buy this. Remember that the Wii fitness board sold millions.

Could you suspend the bowl in some rubber dampers to reduce sound and vibration getting to the floor? If the bowl itself is also dampened, it should be much more silent. I think this is important.

yes, a distance function would be cool. although most games have distance measurement that show up in the game statistics.
haha, first time i played Crysis 3 i ran 66 km over 15 hours.
i will never have to struggle again with my weight, yeaah.
thanks to Jan and Palmer.
serious, if the gait feels natural and you can use it for hours, the Omni will be the best fitness device ever made.

colocolo wrote:
serious, if the gait feels natural and you can use it for hours, the Omni will be the best fitness device ever made.

As a hiker I have to disagree. Best fitness device ever made is the outdoors

remosito wrote:

colocolo wrote:
serious, if the gait feels natural and you can use it for hours, the Omni will be the best fitness device ever made.

As a hiker I have to disagree. Best fitness device ever made is the outdoors

I disagree - The outdoors has a slight design flaw ( RAIN )

remosito wrote:

colocolo wrote:
serious, if the gait feels natural and you can use it for hours, the Omni will be the best fitness device ever made.

As a hiker I have to disagree. Best fitness device ever made is the outdoors

yes, but outdoors i cant fight goblins or dragons, instead i have to take care of loud heavy cars driving past.
freedom is when you can walk in every direction you want to.
i urgently hope that someday cars will disappear and instead we will travel with a vehicle that has been invented by NASA and is called Skytran.

Great suggestion regarding the calories/distance meter! I think the Omni might be cheaper than certain gym memberships.

remosito wrote:

colocolo wrote:
serious, if the gait feels natural and you can use it for hours, the Omni will be the best fitness device ever made.

As a hiker I have to disagree. Best fitness device ever made is the outdoors

Not for those of us who fear the outside. The yellow face, it burns us, it hurts our eyes precious.

JanVR wrote:Great suggestion regarding the calories/distance meter! I think the Omni might be cheaper than certain gym memberships.

after a few rounds of TF2 I could imagine taking off the rift to see "3453 calories burned" With the rift integrated into cryengine 3 there would effectively be an endless supply of environments for virtual hiking etc.

I was wondering if you thought about having the body support structure come from the center, up between the users legs. That would allow for jumping and crouching (simple telescoping rod), rotation would be optimal because the moving part would be in the center of rotation (the system would also be less bulky). I guess my question is if a thin rod in the center would interfere with the kind of common motions on the omni? Even if you would slightly bump into it every once in a while it seems to me that the walking motion would leave the area between you legs void. Any thoughts?

ronjart wrote:I was wondering if you thought about having the body support structure come from the center, up between the users legs. That would allow for jumping and crouching (simple telescoping rod), rotation would be optimal because the moving part would be in the center of rotation (the system would also be less bulky). I guess my question is if a thin rod in the center would interfere with the kind of common motions on the omni? Even if you would slightly bump into it every once in a while it seems to me that the walking motion would leave the area between you legs void. Any thoughts?

Ending in the pooper or how could that work?

I like the calorie counter idea. This would be the ultimate form of "gamification" , turning a game into an activity instead of trying to turn an activity into a game.

The running and changing direction in these demos is really impressive. I haven't seen anything like that before, not even in the youtube clips of the expensive military and research ODT's. Michio Kaku was struggling to walk at a slow pace on one of those room size treadmills in his holodeck episode of "Physics of the Impossible".I think the Omni is a big step ( ) forward for consumer ODT's.

Parallaxis wrote:

ronjart wrote:I was wondering if you thought about having the body support structure come from the center, up between the users legs. That would allow for jumping and crouching (simple telescoping rod), rotation would be optimal because the moving part would be in the center of rotation (the system would also be less bulky). I guess my question is if a thin rod in the center would interfere with the kind of common motions on the omni? Even if you would slightly bump into it every once in a while it seems to me that the walking motion would leave the area between you legs void. Any thoughts?

Ending in the pooper or how could that work?

I'm sure there are ways of creating a comfortable solution, some sort of harness. Like a half-circular rod attached to the end of the telescoping pole, slightly offset from your valuable parts, attached to a belt like harness.

ronjart wrote:body support structure come from the center, up between the users legs. That would allow for jumping and crouching (simple telescoping rod)

Is anyone else imagining the horror of mechanical failure on a jump here lol

norgoth wrote:You can buy cheap sport carpet in your sport market.

Cowmat. Might help.

ronjart wrote:

Parallaxis wrote:

ronjart wrote:I was wondering if you thought about having the body support structure come from the center, up between the users legs. That would allow for jumping and crouching (simple telescoping rod), rotation would be optimal because the moving part would be in the center of rotation (the system would also be less bulky). I guess my question is if a thin rod in the center would interfere with the kind of common motions on the omni? Even if you would slightly bump into it every once in a while it seems to me that the walking motion would leave the area between you legs void. Any thoughts?

Ending in the pooper or how could that work?

I'm sure there are ways of creating a comfortable solution, some sort of harness. Like a half-circular rod attached to the end of the telescoping pole, slightly offset from your valuable parts, attached to a belt like harness.

This isn't a totally crazy idea. Crouching is pretty important for immersion when positional tracking is added.

The two main unanswered questions are:

-Would the rod conflict with the walking (strafing) motion
-Would such a system give enough support

This isn't a totally crazy idea. Crouching is pretty important for immersion when positional tracking is added.

Yes, crouching would be very fine, because its a very natural behaviour when you enter a new world. you instinctly have to examine the floor for traces.
i am sure there exists a solution for the Omni.

its a good idea but i think you would catch your legs or feet when running some sort of seatbelt mechanism from above attached to a harness might be better with maybe a post like a beach shower

ronjart wrote:The two main unanswered questions are:

-Would the rod conflict with the walking (strafing) motion
-Would such a system give enough support

i think the rod in the middle would conflict the walking in some cases.
but your proposal shows a good and cheap solution for crouching.
the current waist support of the Omni should allow via telescope rods to crouch.
to accomplish this the waist support should be made out of very light weighted aluminium tubes and the telescope mechanism should contain a
light force spring mechanism, so that you woulnt need much strength to push it down to the ground.

i am thinking about those gas springs that are build in trunk doors.
a gas spring with minimum force requirement would be sufficient.

colocolo wrote:

ronjart wrote:The two main unanswered questions are:

-Would the rod conflict with the walking (strafing) motion
-Would such a system give enough support

i think the rod in the middle would conflict the walking in some cases.
but your proposal shows a good and cheap solution for crouching.
the current waist support of the Omni should allow via telescope rods to crouch.
to accomplish this the waist support should be made out of very light weighted aluminium tubes and the telescope mechanism should contain a
light force spring mechanism, so that you woulnt need much strength to push it down to the ground.

i am thinking about those gas springs that are build in trunk doors.
a gas spring with minimum force requirement would be sufficient.

gasfeder1.jpg

The trick would be having that still provide support when you don't want to crouch, say if you slip.

Mystify wrote:

colocolo wrote:

ronjart wrote:The two main unanswered questions are:

-Would the rod conflict with the walking (strafing) motion
-Would such a system give enough support

i think the rod in the middle would conflict the walking in some cases.
but your proposal shows a good and cheap solution for crouching.
the current waist support of the Omni should allow via telescope rods to crouch.
to accomplish this the waist support should be made out of very light weighted aluminium tubes and the telescope mechanism should contain a
light force spring mechanism, so that you woulnt need much strength to push it down to the ground.

i am thinking about those gas springs that are build in trunk doors.
a gas spring with minimum force requirement would be sufficient.

gasfeder1.jpg

The trick would be having that still provide support when you don't want to crouch, say if you slip.

i don't plan to slip. The nice thing about this device is , that one can test his own waist support solutions.

JanVR:

A few questions:

1. What is the approximate weight limit of this device? Min-Max
2. What are the height limits? Min-Max
3. Approximate cost for this device?
4. How fluid is the motion on the mat surface in comparison to reality?

Thank you! Looks amazing!

Jumping and crouching would best be solved via bungie cords attached at one end to the ceiling. But of course, that would impact the portability of the unit.

Great suggestions! Our Kickstarter will have a DIY reward that comes with just the base and the shoes, so that you can build your own upper support structure. We want to learn as much as possible from the input and creativity of the community.

Stevetb:

- Weight up to 285lb with a factor 2 (so double)
- Height approximately 5.0' - 6'5"
- Targeting a cost in the $400-$600 range without shipping; this includes our tracking hardware and software
- The feeling of walking on the Omni can be compared with walking on a manual treadmill

Thanks for all the suggestions and questions!

Jan

JanVR wrote:Great suggestions! Our Kickstarter will have a DIY reward that comes with just the base and the shoes, so that you can build your own upper support structure. We want to learn as much as possible from the input and creativity of the community.

Stevetb:

- Weight up to 285lb with a factor 2 (so double)
- Height approximately 5.0' - 6'5"
- Targeting a cost in the $400-$600 range without shipping; this includes our tracking hardware and software
- The feeling of walking on the Omni can be compared with walking on a manual treadmill

Thanks for all the suggestions and questions!

Jan

Hi Jan,

My fiancée is only 1.48 m tall (or "short" I guess!). Does that mean she can't use the Omni? What problems might that cause? Or could she use shoes with thick soles to compensate?
Thanks

I'm curious as to the durability of the surface. I realize that the surface itself is your secret sauce and wouldn't expect you to detail it in too much detail. But, given we've all had cookware with egg-sticking holes developing in it despite our best efforts, what is the durability of the coating of the base? Does its coefficient of friction decrease or increase over time and, if so, over how much time?

As far as the shoes are concerned, they being shoes vs clip-ons or socks has me a bit concerned over the durability and accessibility of those too....especially the added complication of multiple foot sizes and shapes. There are short feet, wide feet, narrow feet, long feet and multiple permutations of all those. Then you have to factor in those with arch support requirements, those with prosthesis, those with missing or malformed toes and add that to the availability of cobblers who, when presented with a pair of "virtual reality shoes", won't stare at you funny. Finally, the "Hey, friend, try this out" thing simply won't work if the friend doesn't share the same shoe size as the owner of the Omni.

I think this thing has amazing promise and wish you best of luck, and may even get one(hobbyist base version) myself, but is there anything you can safely say at this point to alleviate my concerns above?

hi jan, can you do a demo without the ring on as it would help me decide how to support oneself if i opted for base only tier on kickstarter thanks

k2k wrote:hi jan, can you do a demo without the ring on as it would help me decide how to support oneself if i opted for base only tier on kickstarter thanks

yes, that would be really interesting.

Is the treadmill completely manual? it looks like a lot of force is needed to get the thing moving.

usb247 wrote:Is the treadmill completely manual? it looks like a lot of force is needed to get the thing moving.

Nothing is moving, its a low friction surface

Mystify wrote:

usb247 wrote:Is the treadmill completely manual? it looks like a lot of force is needed to get the thing moving.

Nothing is moving, its a low friction surface

Oh whoops I thought it was a treadmill. Its a bit hard to see in the video. Do you have to push hard or do your feet just slide around?

Joe Rogan tweeted the youtube demo of the Omni :

https://twitter.com/joerogan/status/328224782803927041

Good publicity ! He has more than 1 million followers.