Meant to be Seen

I'm confused as to why the omni doesn't use a tread belt?

I'm actually really confused as to the differences between a manual and motorised treadmill...why do treadmills even have motors?

Hi Tom. Normal treadmills are built purely for exercise, not exploration and therefore you only need to move in one direction. They are motorised so that the belt speed can be increased digitally, forcing you to run faster to keep up.
An omni-directional treadmill that used belts and motors would be difficult to design, more expensive to manufacture, require more assembly and maintenance, and use more electricity.

Also just to be clear, the Omni is a passive device which uses low friction soles on the shoes and a low friction surface on the concave base so when you take a step out your foot will slide back to the center. Grooves prevent your feet from slipping out to the side, so you can move quite quickly on it. The movement of your feet will be tracked by capacitive tracking built into the base, fed to your computer/console(hopefully) over USB and translated into the game.

Thank you sutekiB. So the motor is only used to control the speed of the belt's movement i.e to make sure you get a consistent speed?

These difficulties you mentioned in manufacturing and designing a belt-driven omni directional treadmill - what are they specifically? What I'm wondering is why the omni doesn't use a system that incorporates an array of manually powered treads instead of low-friction shoes? Is it simply the cost?

No problem Tom. Yes that's my understanding, I've used them at gyms and owned one before. I remember having to apply some kind of silicon lubricant under the belt, which was a bit of a nuisance. I imagine the Omni only needs to be dusted occasionally!
Some people have proposed designs for manual belt omni-treadmills on these forums, but I'm not an engineer so I couldn't tell you how viable they are.

No, I have read about how it works believe it or not What I'm wondering about the incline that it uses - if a multi-directional array of treads was used instead of a low-friction surface, would an incline be required? Or could it just be a horizontal surface? Akin to the powered treadmill used by the Gadget Show in their Battlefield 3 simulator, except without the motors? Would a harness of some kind be required to stabilise the user and/or return them back to the centre of the treadmill, or would the movement of the treads alone prevent the user from moving away from the centre of the treadmill?

Ah, ok - sorry, this is the only ODT thread I've seen so far, obviously I haven't looked carefully enough :

I am a backer of both the omni and the sixense kickstarters.

I was really excited for both and am looking forward to seeing them work. The only thing that really bummed me out was the fact you had to buy shoes. I really wanted to let lots of friends try it with possible strap ons or something to that effect. However now with omni and sixense working together, I wonder if sixense trackers can be used in lieu and you could just put something on your friends feet for low friction so more people can try it out.

Supposedly they are going to work well together..

Great Job! If I wasn't going to be working on my haptic feedback glove project this winter I probably would try to make one of these I may still try to make one in the summer if I am not too busy with work.

Hi, great work! I am trying to make my own vr set with an opendive, wiimotes, an wooden planks.
I am using a flat walking surface and it will work like yours.