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Up and Coming
February 7, 2014

proposal for simple walking scheme for VR, what do u think?

Howdy all, I was thinking about the Valve VR demo and how they used a rug with raised edges so that you would know the limits of the VR space. not sure if this has been thought up before, but what if you use a similar rug that lets you know if you are going out of bounds , and then just walk in place. Then apply detectors like the stem or LEDs on your lower legs tied to multiple crystal cove tracking cameras to track your leg movement. then the speed and height of your steps would correlate directly to the movement speed in game. an example would be that you just slowly and barely lift your legs for a slow walk, then when you transition to a run you walk/run in place at a faster rate and bring your legs up higher. In a first person shooter, tie this scheme to a simulated weapon that gives you one to one gun tracking, or a boring traditional controller. On the controller or weapon you would have a a directional pad (WASD) that registers the direction of the walk. This way if you want to side step or back step you push the direction pad in that direction , but the speed of your walk/run is tied to the speed and height of your leg movements. I know this wouldn't be as cool as the OMNI or the Cyberith Virtualizer, but I bet it would still be pretty immersive and would not require bulky hardware.

    4 replies

    Inspiring
    February 9, 2014
    I like it! I foresee a freely-available Unity package popping up to do just that for developers with the STEM.
    Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com
    Up and Coming
    February 9, 2014
    I really like this as well. In my current project I've been irritated using the left thumb stick on the hydras for movement mainly because it's hard to reload the left handed weapon while moving (as it uses a button down with a gesture to open the weapon for reload).
    when stem gets here this sounds like a great thing to use, but in my game it will mean getting the 4-5 stem pack in order to us this feature, but nice idea!
    Up and Coming
    February 9, 2014
    No offence, but actually it's a pretty shitty idea. Just imagine yourself swinging your legs for like few hours straight. It's gonna be much worse than doing it in ODT.
    enzoAuthor
    Up and Coming
    February 9, 2014
    With the original DK just standing up and playing HalfLife 2 made me feel even more immersed then just sitting, I think that walking in place would not be ideal but would be more immersive then just sitting; tied to a positional gun it could be pretty fun, again not as cool a directional treadmill, but still fun. Also this would not require additional treadmill equipment incase you have a wife with the power of veto...