Full-Body Force-Feedback Simulator

That looks like a safer and more affordable version of these "rides":






I hope your device is configurable for various ceiling heights, and can keep the rider's head away from nearby desks or chairs where the computer equipment may be located.

Although your device does manipulate your "full body" as a unit, it does not provide kinematic feedback for "full body" joint orientation or force (making it "unibody" orientation and acceleration feedback, and not really "full body" force-feedback, or even "force-feedback" (such as would resist joint motions), by correct usage of the terminolgy used in the thread title. More details about "real" full-body force-feedback were discussed in this thread:
"Exohaptics": exoskeleton for haptic feedback!
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=16484

However, your device looks like a valuable and entertaining peripheral that may be an exciting addition to a VR collection for those you have the space to use it safely. It may find a market in VR arcades or amusement parks, or in the collections of hardcore VR fans who are willing to take it out and set it up when they want to use it, then put it back in storage between uses. It does not look (to me) like a piece of furniture with a lot of WAF potential.

Also, do you have a way to route cabling though your device to prevent rotary entanglement events?

EnRifted Oculus employee engaged in rotary entanglement event:tomf.jpg
This TESTDRIVE device DOES look like great fun, especially after we figure out how to route the Rift cables for safety and long-term reliability, and I know people would be lining up to use it if the ride admission price were affordable. Another concern not addressed here is that any gaming controllers held by the rider would surely need some sort of safety straps to prevent them from flying out of grasp and causing harm.

Also, your DNS and/or web server are misconfigured. The URL in your signature does not work:
http://www.RiftSurfVR.com

However, removing the "www." does work:
http://RiftSurfVR.com

You should fix that not only because your forum signature uses the "www.", but also because some web browsers automatically insert that if missing from the URL.

Now that I browsed the web site, I see that WAF is probably not a concern. Unlike the video above that looks to me like it COULD fit in a house, this photo from the web site shows a completely different perceived sense of scale:



This looks much more like a theme park amusement ride than something that would fit in a house, or even in a VR arcade.

However, this looks like a different model from the one in the above video, which raises more questions:

Do these come in different sizes? And what is the load capacity? How much power consumption? What lubrication requirements? What is the recommended maintenance schedule? How often is the required periodic safety inspection? How must this be anchored to the floor for a realistic safety margin beyond its recommended load-bearing capacity? What games is this simulator compatible with, and does it come with driver software and game-configuration utilities?

I am sure that other forum members have questions too. You have certainly gotten our attention, and our interest.
;)

That certainly does look like a fun machine.

That seems like it handles the smooth motions pretty well, how well does it do for mirroring peak forces from events such as collisions?

"Felix12g" wrote:
That certainly does look like a fun machine.

That seems like it handles the smooth motions pretty well, how well does it do for mirroring peak forces from events such as collisions?

Unless the simulated collision is from behind, you would feel jerked back by your safety harness rather than pushed back by an obstruction, I think. Active limb restraints may be able to provide some resistance or motive force haptic feedback. I think limb feedback is more important for VR in-game construction and modelling (which is what I want it for) than full-body manipulation can provide (although great for theme park rides).

This device really does look more like a theme park ride than a VR haptic device, especially when the videos and photos do not show riders wearing an HMD. Although it does provide "unibody" orientation and acceleration feedback, it does not (yet) really provide force-feedback to our full body (including limbs and hands) that we need for fully-immersive and useful VR haptics that allow us to accurately MANIPULATE our VR environments, IMHO. A fun ride, but not yet a convincing VR tool (as defined by the sample photos and video). Perhaps future updates will be more convincing. We shall see...

And, what price range? Will there be a DIY kit? Can typical Rifters afford one of these?

Another thought after looking, a Hydra probably isn't the best approach when considering where arms will go. Adding guards to prevent crushed limbs will probably result in banging your hands against them and breaking any sort of immersion. Static inputs such as yoke, wheel, joysticks etc may do better as inputs in this case.

Accuracy with a Hydra is also another concern when players are being moved around without a frame of reference. Momentum is going to throw your arms around as well, interfering with any sort of input accuracy if your arms are away from your body using the Hydra to its full advantage.

One thing you might want to consider is a plug and play input system for one of these. Rather than building a single input scheme into the frame, build in an input socket. Games will be limited by what inputs are available if you just have one scheme. Trying to build a chair with all possibilities becomes a mess, believe me. On the flip side, if the player can grab the input scheme off a rack as they wait for their turn, then plug it in as they climb in for their chosen game, that could work well to leaving the options completely open for game development for this.

Want to play a flight sim? Grab a yoke and throttle, or do you prefer a joystick? Racing, slap in a logitech wheel. How about a helicopter game? You can expand that further into really specialized novelty controls for say a kayak simulator.

Looking at your concept, a cross bar that snaps in rather than hinges and brings along whatever input your game of choice needs certainly looks like it would be possible.

Any cockpit based VR environment is going to benifit from some thing like this, planes, tanks, spaceship.... crashing that formula 1 at 350 KPH is going to be a whole lot more compelling. Cost is going to be a big barrier here, to the average joe, but arcade and simulators could certainly price this into the mix.

First things first, good find geekmaster, thanks for the catch.

Re: Full-Body Force-Feedback Simulator
Post by geekmaster » Mon Jul 15, 2013 6:24 pm

Also, your DNS and/or web server are misconfigured. The URL in your signature does not work:
http://www.RiftSurfVR.com

However, removing the "www." does work:
http://RiftSurfVR.com

We have not really finished with the site's construction yet and really appreciate the catch, onwards and upwards :oops:

Full Body

I want to say thanks for the really great feedback and especially the topic of 'Full-Body' and 'Force-Feedback'. I agree with this definition completely and we clearly do not yet have something that ticks that box, but we have made one hell of a good start :D We will add more and more and develop towards this goal as hard as we can :geek:

The most important part of building this machine and the variations therein, was to 'start' and see what we could come up with. We have built a prototype that will be well suited to any 'driving' or 'piloting' simulation and we are building software specific to this rig. The goal really to be able to continue to fund our R&D project and try to live up to the mission statement.

So again thank you for the feedback.

I hope we can discuss the next version in the nearest future and even get something built, exploring some of the links provided has really given us some great ideas for version 2.

Controls

The feedback about controls being a fixed point in the middle of the cockpit instead of Hydra really hit home. We will actually be putting a cockpit around the chair that resembles the inside of the game world we are building specifically for this ride, so in some ways it could even be more immersive. Still that said, our experiments with Hydra in Oculus certainly has some flaws (at least as far as we can tell) with accuracy and so we might just kill two birds with one stone there.

Size

The prototype we have built that is shown in this video is pretty large and is not targeted at the home audience, in fact it is not targeted at any specific audience at the moment. As we will be doing a lot of strenuous testing while we develop we decided to build something more robust and work from there. It would be great to be able to build a range of these systems and potentially, just like the progression from Arcade to Home Console, we might find we can do the same in next 5-10 years. In the shorter term we are looking at developing an Arcade experience that you can't get at home, yet!

So yes, it's pretty big :)

Simulator

As you say Zerowaitstate, (thanks for the comments btw), cockpit simulators are really the target for this prototype. We're even developing our own game to run specifically on this machine, well at least the next few iterations of it. We can potentially connect it to a flight simulator and this will really help to create the feeling of really being at the controls of a plane or helicopter.

This is a really expanding area of VR at the moment and we're really interested in for this configuration of machine.

And Finally...

The video I posted does not really show the Machine's motion as we expect during it's operation, although it is clearly capable of putting the chair into a pretty rapid spin. Hopefully this week we will be able to get some more recent video posted showing it in operation with a pilot in the seat and Oculus...

We are in the next phase of the systems development and hopefully I will be able to share more as we go forward. In the meantime please keep the feedback coming we're pretty excited here in the office and we're already having some great ideas after reading through the posts. Thanks again.

Another thing to keep in mind if you're targeting ground based racing is vibrations. Normally it isn't the first aspect that you want to consider, but from a simulation standpoint it adds a lot to the feeling of actually being in a working machine.

Back in 2008 I had the pleasure of working with a company out in New York called Force Dynamics on a project. While out there I tried out their 401 platform with the racing game. The motions and responsiveness were great for tricking you into feeling the same as what you saw on screen, but one of the coolest aspects is the built in vibration running through the simulator when that car started up. It was a small thing, but it added a lot to the experience.

@Felix: Thanks for the comments about vibration, that's something we really could implement relatively simple, rumble packs in the seat as well as vibrations through our motors. FYI: we're coming from a background in 3D Cinemas that have added things like dry-ice, water spay and other added tricks for feedback. We're even thinking about adding fans inside the riders case to add wind and other sensations.

Rumble is definitely doable and hopefully we can use several methods to achieve the result. I agree having the feeling feedback for sounds like engine start up really adds to the immersion.

We plan to encase the rider in a pod that resembles the one presented inside the game to help trick the mind into believing they are really there and that is something we can develop independent from the main mechanic part of the machine.

I will try and update this thread as we make further improvements so hopefully share a bit more of the behind the scenes in our workshop.

Thanks again for the feedback, pun intended :roll: