Lots of PC Peripherals or a single exoskeleton?

[Greyman]

Well, I for one am totally sold on VR, but i have a problem.  Since donning my Rift for the first time, i have noticed that the immersion can be broken by the simplest of things.  Your lower legs not being at the right angle when in Elite Dangerous for example or the joystick not being of exactly the same type or in the same position as the one you can see.  I am guessing that i am not the only one having these feelings and it would appear that we have two main choices.

We can keep buying specific peripherals like steering wheels, HOTAS, whole cockpits etc. or we could hope for a piece of kit that would allow all of the above to be simulated, in software.  I've bought a HOTAS Warthog recently, but although you can use it for more than flying an A10 simulator, it is fairly specialist and it isn't cheap.

The latter option would require that you would be able to actually touch, sorry for the pun, the items that you can see in the HMD.  For example, you could sit in the cockpit of a racing car and be able to feel the steering wheel and everything else in the cockpit, without it actually being there.  The wheel would turn just like a current physical one and vibrations of any magnitude and frequency could also be generated.  

Now, i hear you say, how could that be done.  Well, imagine a full or even a half exoskeleton that has loads of actuators that can be programmed to offer real resistance when simulated hands touch a simulated object.  It'd take some programming, but there are plenty of good developers out there that could make a good job of that and it wouldn't be long before someone developed a software tool that would convert a CAD drawing of any object into a virtual representation of it.

The device wouldn't be cheap, but when you compare the price and space requirement of every possible physical control device and having something that could pretend to be all of those and every other device that might pop into a game developers mind at any time in the future and it perhaps doesn't sound so bad.   

Maybe we'll see something like it in amusement arcades before long or maybe i'm just barking mad  🙂

[JakemanOculus]

"If you’re willing to restrict the flexibility of your approach, you can almost always do something better."

— John Carmack

In other words, just use a steering wheel.

[Techy111]

For things like this, how long would we be able to hold our arms up without physically touching anything ? Whilst it would be amazing, I just couldn't imagine holding my arms out in front of me grabbing nothing for long periods of time 😐

[Greyman]

The exoskeleton would make it feel like you were holding something.  Simulating hands, wrist joints, elbow joints, shoulder joints etc. It could create whatever resistances/forces you would need to make it feel like you were actually holding any object that the programmers could model.  

[Techy111]

Might replace the missus then. Don't touch her in real life 😉

[falken76]

I think it would be awesome, but it would be hard to sell.  Would people need to be fitted for the suit?  Is it like regular clothing or more like a mocap suit? and Techy111 is right, holding your arms out in the air for any period of time would be exhausting very quickly and a suit with actuators would need to be able to simulate a solid surface that you could rest your arms on so you are not using any muscles to hold them in that position.  I would love to see it made.  I think a vr suit will be made, but more for the way Bud Bundy used it in a Married with Children episode  😉

[kojack]

What I'd like to see is a controller placement calibration system using leap motion.

The rift knows where your head is. The leap motion knows where your hands are relative to the rift. It can still roughly track your hands when they grab a controller. So in a car game you could do a calibration mode where you grip the wheel and it works out where it is relative to you. Then it either moves the wheel in the game, or moves your head position to be the correct relative position from the in-game wheel.

Same with joystick and throttle. In fact if you look at the chairs in Elite Dangerous, they have adjustable joystick and throttle position! The joysticks fold up from the side then slide along rails to the desired position. We don't see that happen but if you look at the co-pilot seat and the pilot seat you can see how it would work (co-pilot seat has controls in folded up position).

[Zandil]

kojack said:

Same with joystick and throttle. In fact if you look at the chairs in Elite Dangerous, they have adjustable joystick and throttle position! The joysticks fold up from the side then slide along rails to the desired position. We don't see that happen but if you look at the co-pilot seat and the pilot seat you can see how it would work (co-pilot seat has controls in folded up position).

Great, now I have to log onto Elite and have a look after work, I was planning to wash the car but that just went out the window. 

[kojack]

A non VR player would never even see those parts of the chair. 🙂

[Warbloke]

Greyman said:

The exoskeleton would make it feel like you were holding something.  Simulating hands, wrist joints, elbow joints, shoulder joints etc. It could create whatever resistances/forces you would need to make it feel like you were actually holding any object that the programmers could model.  

What if someone made a computer virus though overriding the safely protocols 😮

... suddenly out of nowhere we find ourselves holding a car above our heads and the damn exoskeleton breaks our shoulders and back.