I can't believe no one's talking about Infinideck

Nobody talking about it because nobody can hear anything over the noise. It's the same tech used for those baggage conveyors at airports, and just as loud. It's a neat POC piece, and maybe, someday, it will be practical, but not any time soon.

Nanobots

Building and deconstructing the terrain around you as you move.

Duh people.... Duh...

Hoo, so many skeptics in a room full of VR developers/enthusiasts. Taste the irony.

Not that I think Infinideck will end up in living rooms any time soon, but my instincts tell me it will feel much more natural than the other harnessed options when it is fully developed and VR-ready. For safety, I also assume they will include a harness, but it could be more loose and minimal so that it prevents the user from hitting the floor if they fall but it doesn't hinder regular locomotion.

Keep in mind we're skeptical with good reason, not skeptical because we don't like new technology. If the Infinideck team had waited until they could get the system down to say 2 square metres, no more than say 30cm off the ground, and had implemented motion detection to control the direction and speed of the treadmill, my tune would be very different. But the fact is that we simply have a treadmill that can go in all directions rather than just forward, and the company is calling it the future of VR, without having fully explored its tractability.
The endgame of this type of tech is definitely better than the endgame of the Omni-style treadmill, but that doesn't mean it's worth getting excited about just yet. In the same way that devices like the Myo are a nifty idea, but are nowhere near the point where they will become useful for anything more than slightly gimmicky applications.

I think (although I have no technical experience in this field) that something like a giant gerbil sphere would work better... think of it as being inside the ball of a trackball, with X and Y rollers detecting the speed and angle of motion (and keeping the sphere in one place). If you fall, little risk of injury. The larger the sphere, the "flatter" the ground would feel. This isn't likely to take off as a home accessory, but would be pretty cool in VR arcades and the like.

"nkeeney" wrote:
I think (although I have no technical experience in this field) that something like a giant gerbil sphere would work better... think of it as being inside the ball of a trackball, with X and Y rollers detecting the speed and angle of motion (and keeping the sphere in one place). If you fall, little risk of injury. The larger the sphere, the "flatter" the ground would feel. This isn't likely to take off as a home accessory, but would be pretty cool in VR arcades and the like.

Yep, there's already one called the Virtusphere.



$28,000 is a bit much for most home VR users though. :)

Badass.

"kojack" wrote:
$28,000 is a bit much for most home VR users though. :)

If you have the space you can probably afford it. And it's a "before the rift" kind of VR product isn't it? So prices will probably go down quite some bit.

Regardless, I can imagine a few of those to be a good investment for a vr arcade business.

From what I've heard the problem with the Virtusphere is it's inertia. It takes a lot of effort to get it rolling, it doesn't do turns well, and just forget about sudden stops.

"DieKatzchen" wrote:
From what I've heard the problem with the Virtusphere is it's inertia. It takes a lot of effort to get it rolling, it doesn't do turns well, and just forget about sudden stops.

Well, if you combine that with a motion capture system and a good control scheme you can use servo motors to compensate.
That idea was the first thing that I found when I looked it up. http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=14591

But then what is possible according to the state of the art research and what will be in a commercial available product are mostly different things.