Hi ziphnor. Those are some really good questions so here goes
>If the kicstarter price was significantly lower i would definitely have backed it just to try it out. However, with a price tag of £150 + £25 shipping for what appears to be a plate of slippery material and matching shoes does make me want to have some confidence that it will work for me. The Omni might be more expensive (especially shipped to EU), but it comes with a builtin tracking solution, and it looks fairly natural on video.
A. I've only seen it look natural when Jan uses it. I'm not implying anything about that but given the appalling name VR has had we wanted to eschew any of the old tactics of selling the VR dream rather than proving the product. We therefore went deliberately the other way to show novice users trying it for the first time because we don't want anyone getting their WizDish and saying "well they didn't show that in the video". I feel that we have a moral obligation to disclose how you mount the device, put on and adjust any equipment and provide close-ups shots of every part.
As for the price it’s really hard when you don't know the volume, cannot therefore get accurate shipping quotes, the tax situation changes according to how many etc. These are effectively being custom made for you and we are taking a considerable risk because there is no way we won't deliver what we say. At around the price you might pay for say, a meal out, I'm hoping some will look at it as an affordable way to learn a lot and benefit from a very well designed exercise product.
I know Kickstarter require a working prototype but as I haven't seen the in-built tracking option you mention I'm afraid I can't comment on that.
>My concerns (which are somewhat aggravated by the few videos available) are:
* Side ways sliding when walking
>It appears that people’s feet tend to slide sideways when walking, which at least appears to be somewhat uncomfortable. At the same time it appears to get people to turn their body side-to-side as they walk, which i at least from the outside appears to cause the image to shake a lot (more so than the regular head-bobbing of walking), but perhaps that is not so bad, since the body is actually matching the movement?
A. Most of the people in the recent videos had only been on the device for a matter of seconds when filmed. I've never had an issue with sliding sideways. Your feet will naturally follow the very shallow curve of the dish which may account for what you see but I can assure you that you are unaware of it while using it. It is very easy to slide both feet out sideways if you want to and indeed we will be using that with head leaning to achieve strafing.
* Turning
>I am worried that it feels unsafe / tricky to turn/re-orient while standing still with so little friction. I notice that on most of the videos people tend to rigidly keep their feet in the same position while looking around instead of moving their feet a little bit with them as they turn their body.
A. Turning is an absolute joy on the WizDish. You can even spin round at least 180 degrees. Skateboarders and skaters love this! I also noticed that some people seemed afraid to turn at first until I showed them how easy it is. You can either pivot both feet to turn on the spot or naturally turn as you walk. Most people do all this without even thinking about it.
* Falling over
>There are videos of people tipping over while using the Rift standing up without support. Personally i did not react that strongly to something like the roller coaster demo, but still it seems likely that you can disoriented easily ( for example if the game exposes the player to a situation where the avatar is about to fall), and on a slippery surface accidents just seem extremely likely.
A. I won't say you can't fall but if you did you would tend to crumple with your arms out. If you wanted to play a violent game we would recommend you remove hard items from reach and put down something soft. This might be as simple as putting it next to the sofa and placing the sofa cushions around you. You would have to satisfy yourself that you could come to no harm. I don't want to diminish the argument for safety but it's also not right to exaggerate it either.
An astute person pointed out the other day that if you put a frame around it and it collapsed the frame breaks, but if it topples over you break! It's a serious point. Without a frame you wouldn't fall flat like a rake, but if you toppled in one, because Force = Mass x Acceleration, your whole body weight would accelerate until it hit the ground whereupon your spine might land on the rim that goes around the waist with a force far greater than your body weight.
The demo was challenging for two reasons. Firstly, we are improving the Kinect software (the Kinect 2 looks like it has near zero latency). Quite often the Kinect didn't stop you moving virtually the instant you did. That upsets your balance, at which point you understand why good positional tracking is needed. When you move you head side to side or back and fore and the video remains still, balancing becomes slightly more difficult for a moment. At least the Rift has a pretty good idea where down is and can automatically adjust the image to suit. With the Vuzix glasses you had to manually move the mouse so the horizon was about in the right place. Adding positional tracking should not only help balance but solve most of the nausea problems too. Stepping one step to the side can really upset your brain if the vision doesn't move with it.
The fact the WizDish keeps you in one place should help because it limits the amount of movement that's possible. It also doesn’t have to be super accurate. If you went 5 inches to the right but only 4 back again it probably wouldn't matter and would be infinitely better than nothing happening.
* Similarity to skating
>I suck at (roller)skating and skiing, so i am worried that this will translate into sucking at using the WizDish
A.
I can't skate either despite years of trying. In fact the majority of people who've used it can't. The dish shape and the fact that our unique skates have a flat bottom controls the movement so for the first time you will find that you don't suck at skating. I guarantee it
Actual skaters do find it very exciting though.
>The above might be good to keep in mind when doing more videos etc. I also agree with the others here that getting more backers will require more videos and reviews by someone unbiased.
A. I thought we'd done quite well in getting unbiased opinions. The videos show many well respected Journalists from the New Scientist, Wired, the Guardian, Gizmag, tehVerge etc. who have then written about their experience on the WizDish. I've not seen any of them do that with other devices even when they provide them with uncritical coverage.
Having tried out a Rift, i am 100% sure i will be buying one as well as fairly convinced that an ODT is going to add greatly to the immersion ( i already know that i wont be using the mouse to control the viewpoint as that makes me extremely motion sick, so i will definitely be needing to at least turn around physically). That makes me very interested in the ODT's and there is still time to convince me the WizDish is the way to go
A. please ask anything you like that will help convince you. We love getting intelligent questions. Having done this for years we tend to forget to mention things than have become obvious to us so it's great when people prompt us to.
>EDIT: With regards to the turning i noticed that this video shows somewhat more confident turns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... yqBQ#at=46
>I would still like to understand why it is that you think it so unlikely that people will slip and fall? How much experience do you have with the WizDish in more disorienting VR environments than say the Tuscany demo?
A. The fact that you soon feel completely comfortable on the WizDish when you use it without video glasses and Kinect 1 proves to me that as those devices improve the WizDish will become more and more fun to use. Electronics and software become obsolete very quickly. Actually, as someone whose background is in those fields I was very keen to keep this passive and simple enough to use with any tech that happens to come along. There are significant issues with
meeting regulations when you build your own hardware and maintaining software to run on the latest OS patches and versions is not an insignificant task.
The reason you are unlikely to fall (as opposed to can't) is because your brain simply won't let you take risks unless you deliberately overcome your natural anxieties. If I asked you to walk around in a pitch black room where you couldn't trip over anything it would take you a while before you dared trying to walk fast or run. I think I mentioned that an interesting thing we noticed during the public trials was that the more cautious found it easier to walk on the WizDish when they wore the Rift because the vision matched their proprioception. Confident skaters were more likely to be initially thrown by the tracking but quickly acclimated to it. It's amazing what your brain can do! That's why VR is an incredibly fascinating subject, especially so because you have to experience it to understand it.
>I would like to hear more about your opinions on the pro and cons(especially) of the WizDish
A. I think that the amount of debate may have given the impression the cons are more significant than they are. I will agree that it’s possible to crumple down and that it needs better tracking to perform at its best. I think many were pleased that they bought the dev kit Rift a couple of years before the commercial version because they would otherwise have been missing out. It's not even as if we're saying you should buy this WizDish now and a better
one in a year or so, because we've gone to great lengths to ensure it's right. We've done our best to make the WizDish affordable at low volume. With the likelihood that it could improve your fitness, posture, balance and core stability I think you would be glad you decided to go for it now.
