I've looked at motion platforms in the past in connection with multiple monitor/projector displays, and the good ones run to $100K plus with 6DOF, skew etc.
It occurs to me that although FPS players will use the frictionless treadmill, racers and flight sim players will need a chair manipulator of some kind.
In the same way that Oculus has democratised head mounted VR, someone needs to do the same for domestic scale motion platforms.
Physical motion feedback will go a long way to ameliorate motion sickness in users if their mental motion sensations are matched by actual physical sensations.
"raidho36" wrote: I've done some research on this topic recently and came to a conclusion that muscle force simulation chairs give better feel than full motion simulation chairs ...
Yes, pressure suits have been used for VR feedback to simulate gravity and acceleration haptic feedback. Some sources claim they can provide more effective feedback than vibrotactile suits alone. Combining both would probably be the best, along with piping hot and cold through heat-exchanger tubing embedded in the suit. The haptic suit could end up being an earth-bound version of a space suit...
For a chair based motion platform i would suggest a racing sim with all degree of rotating movements and bass shakers in the chair. Acceleration should mainly be simulated by earth gravity when rotating for example your body in a lying position, BUT it would need balancing of sensor data. So that every chair movement would be negated in VR. An additional IMU on the chair would therefore be required. Though i don't know how the GVS and brain would perceive this tricking.
Before this whole optical tracking stuff I was hoping I could use a simple office chair (so I could just turn my under body 'after' my head as IRL when spotting something of interest). Combined with an simple cable (attachable to the back of the chair) it would have been the perfect low-cost solution...
Is that a motion chair or a suped-up massage chair? 🙂
Anyway, gotta say, none of these chairs really thrill me. I need something that can flip me upside down. Like a self-driving hamster wheel (practicality and safety concerns aside).
Definitely looks like a massage chair 🙂 But the effect is exactly the opposite. Forces are strong and accurate and especially when used with the Rift it was a great experience. Good thing is that the motion is applied on the torso where the majority of forces are applied as in real driving. The Atomic A2 for example looks impressive with a lot of motion but none of the cars i've ever driven moves like that. I think that the A2 would be perfect for Flight simulations.
An important detail about motion platforms in conjunction with inertial based sensors - vertical orientation and tilt correction in the Rift are accomplished through the constant downward acceleration force of gravity. In other words - sensor fusion assumes that gravity is always down when it sets your horizon. If you use a motion platform to simulate forward motion, the Rift will just tilt your world downwards (keeping it level with the ground) as the platform tilts upwards. To counter this, custom software would need to be built to track the orientation of the platform and and add an offset to the "level" orientation of the Rift. You would need a layer of sensor fusion in the game on top of the Rift SDK to fuse the platform with the Rift orientation.
Is that a motion chair or a suped-up massage chair? 🙂
Anyway, gotta say, none of these chairs really thrill me. I need something that can flip me upside down. Like a self-driving hamster wheel (practicality and safety concerns aside).
Well, I guess you are in luck mate. I am working on a 360 degree motion platform (think of something like a gyroscope or the SEGA R360) with a friend of mine. We are going to blog everything and provide instructions on how to build your own once we are done. So far it looks like it will be a *relatively* cheap solution. It is still in the early stages but I will post more as we get further into it. All code will be open source.
"brantlew" wrote: An important detail about motion platforms in conjunction with inertial based sensors - vertical orientation and tilt correction in the Rift are accomplished through the constant downward acceleration force of gravity. In other words - sensor fusion assumes that gravity is always down when it sets your horizon. If you use a motion platform to simulate forward motion, the Rift will just tilt your world downwards (keeping it level with the ground) as the platform tilts upwards. To counter this, custom software would need to be built to track the orientation of the platform and and add an offset to the "level" orientation of the Rift. You would need a layer of sensor fusion in the game on top of the Rift SDK to fuse the platform with the Rift orientation.
This is something I wanted to ask. With Crystal Cove it has LED's on the HMD which a camera tracks. This is great because if the camera is mounted on the platform, even if the platform is upside-down it will not know due to it tracking the orientation of the LED pattern. However, with the DK1 is there a way to turn this off?
