ShoeHaiku shoe controllers.

Hey Steve,

This needs more attention so I thought I'd give it a bump. I responded in the other post but I have a few questions and I thought I'd ask them here. Please don't feel I am trying to discredit or damage your device by asking these. I think you have a wonderful idea and I am simply playing devils advocate because my curiosity has been piqued.

Firstly, your video doesn't show the multiple degrees of freedom that one would have from just including the Oculus. Is it safe to assume yours hasn't arrived yet? I think this will be a major boon to your pitch as it just looks like the shoes allow you to travel one direction. Everything the Oculus touches right now is turning to gold. I'd throw another video into your campaign as soon as you get yours.

Which leads me to my second thought. The video briefly displays the GUI and it appears there are multiple movements that can be collected and converted. However, the video doesn't show any of these besides the jump. Can you strafe, sprint, etc?

The input calibration seems complex. Have you thought about lessening the user customization and making it very intuitive and potentially even removing the GUI completely?

The wires to the belt are awkward. I understand that you want one to one with the transceivers, and wiring the shoes together is out of the question, but that much cable isn't 'sexy'. I fixed this issue with many to one wireless transceivers. No cables, no mess. I'm sure this is something you've looked into already.

Again, none of this is intended to discourage you. On the contrary I'd like to help if I can. We can always use a larger community of developers and I enjoy the energy of like minded individuals.

Best of luck!

Matt

"SwordArtOnline" wrote:
Hey Steve,
Firstly, your video doesn't show the multiple degrees of freedom that one would have from just including the Oculus. Is it safe to assume yours hasn't arrived yet? I think this will be a major boon to your pitch as it just looks like the shoes allow you to travel one direction. Everything the Oculus touches right now is turning to gold. I'd throw another video into your campaign as soon as you get yours.

I've used the Oculus extensively in the past - so I know exactly what it does. The shoes really replace the WASD+jump+sprint controls in a typical game. Those don't provide directional control either...and this is a strict replacement.

"SwordArtOnline" wrote:

Which leads me to my second thought. The video briefly displays the GUI and it appears there are multiple movements that can be collected and converted. However, the video doesn't show any of these besides the jump. Can you strafe, sprint, etc?

We call these things "foot gestures" - right now, we recognize walk, run, sprint (basically, alternating foot patterns at various speed thresholds) - plus jump (increased pressure on the front of both feet, followed by little or no pressure), leaning in all four directions plus stomp with left foot and stomp with right foot. There are variations on the way we recognise them to allow other forms of game to be played - but that's the basics.

"SwordArtOnline" wrote:

The input calibration seems complex. Have you thought about lessening the user customization and making it very intuitive and potentially even removing the GUI completely?

Actually, it's not complex at all. Most of our gestures are essentially three-state recognition (pressure due to body weight - increased pressure due to forceable impact and no pressure (although it's not really none because the shoes themselves apply some pressure to the bottoms of your feet. It turns out that for MOST people, the default calibration works just fine. Small children and heavily overweight adults might need some different adjustments.

The software as it is right now has four sliders (one for each sensor) that just offset the readings by a constant amount. We plan to simplify this as the project progresses. We have many months before the hardware will be ready to ship during which we'll do considerably more software development. However, it's quite clear from what we already have that there are no difficult problems left to resolve. Kickstarters are all about funding the process of moving from prototype to finished product - and that's what we're doing here.

"SwordArtOnline" wrote:

The wires to the belt are awkward. I understand that you want one to one with the transceivers, and wiring the shoes together is out of the question, but that much cable isn't 'sexy'. I fixed this issue with many to one wireless transceivers. No cables, no mess. I'm sure this is something you've looked into already.

I strongly disagree about the awkwardness of the wires. I've used the system every day for months - and they simply aren't a problem. They can be velco'ed to the knees (although I don't personally bother) and are unnoticable when you're actually using the system. Having wireless to the shoes is also expensive because: (a) You need two circuit boards, two computers, two wireless transmitters (b) because bluetooth cannot cope with three-way communications, we'd either have to use something like ZibBee between the shoes and Bluetooth to the PC - OR the integration of the information between the two shoes would have to be done inside the PC - which would mean developing drivers - which would make portability between systems difficult and use with game consoles impossibl. (c) Wireless implies limited battery life.

Note that our system sells for under $100 and needs no batteries, no drivers, no special software of any kind in the game.

Wireless between the controller box and the PC is clearly more important - and much cheaper to provide - but since Occulus users are already tethered to the PC, this isn't an urgent problem. However, providing a bluetooth controller within the system will solve that. But it does increase the cost - and I don't know whether everyone will want it.

"SwordArtOnline" wrote:

Again, none of this is intended to discourage you. On the contrary I'd like to help if I can. We can always use a larger community of developers and I enjoy the energy of like minded individuals.

Yes, absolutely!

-- Steve

i like the idea here and forgive me if i miss the point but what kind of advantage does something like this offer over a finely calibrated gesture-detection device, focused on your feet. for one, i think the advantage of not having all those wires and cables is a big, big advantage as 3dgeek pointed out.

i actually think this device would be more useful for card counting at the casino. ;)

Think of it as being a more affordable, less bulky, alternative to an omni-directional treadmill...and it lets you jump as well as walk and run.

Detection of hand-gestures is possible of course - but it's not very natural. If you want that "holodeck experience" then you'll want to use your feet for the things you use feet for in the real world.

Sure, you can use a Kinect (or something similar) to detect big movements - but my device can detect really subtle movement - to the extent that you can use it while sitting down...and it's much cheaper than a Kinect...and it doesn't need any software on the PC side...and it's portable to Mac, Linux, etc...and it works with existing games.

(And yes, it would certainly be handy to a card-counter!)

-- Steve

Good luck!

while most gesture-detect devices on the market now may not detect very subtle movements, i hardly think it's going to be much of a challenge to develop some more sensitive ones.

good luck on your project.