Virtuix omni, the true key to vr is coming

Virtuix has finished their production process and already shipped units. They will manufacture units every month now and you should be able to buy one pretty soon.

for those who don't know what a virtuix omni is. It's an omnidirectional treadmill, which makes you able to run around in vr, without being limited to a realistic area.

But this video should explain more, travr, the game that is being played in the video is also made by virtuix, but the omni does work with pretty much every vr game.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1944625487/omni-move-naturally-in-your-favorite-game/posts/1591931

Are his feet just sliding on the "treadmill" surface? If so that means you need to wear those specific shoes... That's a neat little tech demo but no thanks. I will continue to just run into things in my office.

yeah they are sliding but it is not like ice, there has gone a lot of r&d into this, the system was actually already up and running 2 years ago but they just kept on improving and optimizing, they also had to wait for a vr headset...

You need the shoes, but they come with the package

Honestly, I'm more looking forward to what VR is going to do for simulators than action games.

Lol and wiiu gamepad is a gimmick?

Aaaaahhhhhh hahaha

@getyeryayasout said:

What your girlfriend sees:

I lol'ed and lol'ed some more lol

LMAO, that's the most ridiculous gimmicky i've seen is the last few years, this will fail hard but one thing is for sure, i can't wait for Giant's Bomb Quick Look XD.

Yeah, this thing will fail hard...

@GoldenElementXL: So if my wife and I both wanted to play I would need 2 pair of shoes? Is that not silly to you?

Do you and your wife not already own different shoes or do you share a single pair? Do you alternate leaving the house?

As for the product, I've been keeping an eye on VR treadmills and honestly they intrigue me. Some of the early impressions of the Omni that I've read weren't great but I'm curious to see how it goes with the final product. If one of them turns out to be halfway decent, I would be seriously tempted to pick one up.

-Byshop

you have the most expensive cpu and 2 of the most expensive videocards but you start whining for 60$ shoes?

Or did you think you couldn't order them seperately?

@commander: The thing is when the true KEY VR Games are coming ?

that game he's playing seems like a good start.

you have to pick this up if you're into vr, what is the point of vr if you can't run around in a virtual world. Railshooters, car and flying sims are not enough if you ask me.

Oh yeah or play games where your stuck to the size of room.

A rotating chair might be an option as well, but you'll need to automate that as well so you can turn it. Doing that with your feet will get cumbersome fast.

I don't know about motion sickness though, i stil haven't tried vr, so I can only dream...

Nailed it :D

@getyeryayasout said:

What your girlfriend sees:

I was hoping for something like a Holodeck, though that may never exist in my lifetime lol. On a side note, can you imagine having a Star Trek food Replicator in your crib? Damn that would be incredible.

I've always wanted to try this out when I first heard about it.

Here is my issue.

Me - Hey guys, do you want to try out my VR setup?
Friends - Sure!
Me- Wait, what size shoe do you guys wear?
Friends - Why?
Me - You need to wear a special shoe for the "treadmill" to work.

Needing to wear a headset is already cumbersome when trying to showcase the tech to others. This only adds another hurdle. This will never hit the masses. It's too restrictive! Does my wife need a separate set of buttons to play consoles? Does she need her own glasses in order to watch T.V.? There needs to be some sort of "one size fits all" solution or this will flop right out of the gate. Having our own shoes is one thing @Byshop. Needing our own VR shoes that fit us exclusively just to play games is another.

Sorry but nobody is touching my 700$ treadmill + 600$ headset .

But in your case, If you really want your friends to play with this system, buy some seperate shoes with a relatively big size. and if someone wants to try it and their feet are too small, just stuff some newspaper or cotton in it.

there are other treadmills coming out as well, cyberith virtualizer, spacewalk, katwalk. The latter uses special shoes as well, the first two don't.

There also other treadmills that use other technology (instead of a slippery surface) but I don't know if they will be for the near future (or affordable for that matter)

http://www.virtualrealitytimes.com/2015/04/09/list-of-omnidirectional-treadmills-under-development/

When I bought a 3D printer, I told me wife (who's a huge Star Trek fan) that this is basically a replicator. Her complaint was that if it doesn't also make meals then it's not a real replicator.

Yeah, I get what you mean but different VR games use many different forms of locomotion what work in different ways. Excluding sims (like Elite, Project Cars, Dirt Rally, etc) and "room scale experience" games where your movement is real but is confined to the room scale alone (like The Blu, Fantastic Contraption, etc) there are other games that either use room scale or can use room scale. Oculus, for instance, doesn't have room scale so the recommended path for all the developers who develop for Oculus is to use controller based controls. Normal controller movement, but with VR perspective is how a lot of games work as well as games that added VR as an option like Dying Light or Alien Isolation. This works well, but depending on the movement it can be a bit rough from a nausea perspective. The only game that really got me like this was Windlands, which has you flying through the air and spinning to "Spiderman" your way through trees. This is the only game that messed with my sense of balance when standing so I had to play it sitting, but a swiveling chair worked pretty well.

But yeah, a omnidirection treadmill isn't an absolute requirement but I think it would add to the experience, plus I don't mind actually moving around a bit when gaming (I can work up a sweat playing Audioshield but that's one of the reasons I love it). However, I'm not sure that Omni's offering is the best one (although it might be the best one for me and my space as some of these get pretty big). This one looked better but probably also a lot larger and more expensive:

http://www.katvr.com/

Better design, not "diaper" based and allows you to sit in VR as well.

-Byshop

Sure, but that just seemed like a oddly arbitrary thing to balk at after everything else (to me at least).

1) $2500-$3000 gaming rig capable of playing VR games at an acceptable frame rate? Check.

2) A $600 to $800 consumer level VR headset solution? Check.

3) Room to set all of this up? Check.

4) A VR treadmill running at least another $700? Check.

5) Extra pair of treadmill shoes? WHAT? DEAL-BREAKER! SHENANIGANS!

I don't mean to make fun, but my point was that if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. To get to the point where the shoes are even an annoyance means that you already have to have made a pretty significant commitment to a particular path and at that point the shoes seem somewhat insignificant (from my perspective, at least). I don't disagree with any of your points though. While I'm extremely interested in VR, so much so that I have both the Oculus -and- the Vive and I have a PSVR on pre-order, I've been a bit more reticent about throwing down my cash on a VR treadmill of any kind. I applaud these companies for making these, but if I were looking to sink some cash into a new startup as an investment the -last- place I would put my money in the VR space would be on VR treadmills because I see next to no market for them (even though I kind of want one). This is soooo far down the enthusiast path that it's almost ridiculous.

Still, holodeck. :)

-Byshop

That looks awkward..lol

All we need now is VR toilet simulator.

Mister Google predicted humans become immortal from the year 2028 or so. So hang in there a while and maybe you will :D

I have been looking at katvr too but when I looked at initial pricing it was a lot more expensive than the omni.

Now I see that the kickstarter backers get one for 500$ that was the same for the omni, now it is 700$ though.

@Byshop: @ten_pints: @KungfuKitten: Lol

@Byshop: Windlands kicked the shit out of me. I was suffering for two days after playing that and I never get motion sick from anything. It wasnt really the flying and swinging through the trees that did it though it was when I landed on the floor from a great height without the impact and stopping motion that your brain expects to happen that did me in.

Having tried it at a convention before, I was entirely sold. The accuracy of tracking (with Vive) and movement combined is just absolutely incredible - even the simplest things would blow your mind. I already have mine on pre-order, so hopefully it gets to me in Sep/Oct.

At this point, money is no object. I'm tempted to get an Oculus too just to see if it works better with Omni, or maybe finally get contact lenses just for the extra FOV in HMD.

ADD: And I concur, I'm not letting anyone touching my setup. It has to be tuned perfectly for my use, so I'm not letting anyone else adjusting the rear mirror in my Ferrari.

yeah a lot of people that tried this are quite hyped for it.

With good reason, it's gaming while moving completely immersed.

I am really scared about that motion sickness though, i get motion sick sometimes when playing on my new tv (40 inch), which I didn't have on my 32 inch tv. I'm sitting rather close though, about 6 feet. I don't have with games like fallout 4, but fast paced games, like dying light, do me in after 30 mins.

TATS has got you covered XD

Many aspects of Windlands are rough. The flying, swinging, the falling, etc. If you turn off the "quick turn" feature, it moves more smoothly but it's also way more nausea inducing. I felt like I was going to fall over when I tried to play it standing and I tripped over my own feet a couple times. I actually really like the game, though. I just have to play it sitting and even then it gets me a bit "urp-ey" sometimes.

Yeah, people complain constantly about movement-based controls. Personally, I don't think movement controls are a problem. I think they're awesome, but the problem with them is that most motion based controls are awful. When they work they are phenomenal, and the Vive controller tracking is near perfect. I just have to remember to turn off my Xbox because the IR from the kinect will screw with the tracking.

Different games/experiences may have different effects. Room scale games tend to not make people sick because your movement in real life is equivalent to your movement in VR. Other types of games might, though, because different games simulate different kinds of motion. Motion sickness occurs when your inner ear and your eyes disagree about movement, and that disagreement can go two ways. Inner ear = moving + eyes = stationary is what you get in moving vehicles or boats. The other way around is what you get from TV, movies, games, VR, etc. The first one gets me but the second isn't a problem for me.

-Byshop

No thanks.

Okay, we're officially into gimmick territory with VR.

I don't have it in cars but normally I'm not very susceptible to it with games either. It could be because I'm playing dying light on a rather weak pc. I also kind of had it on my 32 inch tv with some games on the x1 , but that was still when they pushed resolution and detail settings too high (like with gta V for instance)

Still you say you have it with that windlands game as well (or at least a little bit). I suppose I'm only going to know for sure when I'm going to try it. At this time I haven't found any shops where I can try it though, so at this time I'm playing the waiting game. Sooner or later, the shops will have one to try.

This one looks far more interesting to me

@GarGx1: Yeah seen that one too, the walking platform seems smaller though and what if you're going the way the pillar is standing, it seems like a good idea, but I think the omni would be better in the end.

It would be different if they put the pillar much further, but that means also more room and higher production costs.

The biggest advantage the KAT has over the Omni is the ability to jump, crouch and even sit. I've always seen the reduced movement allowed by the Omni as a pretty serious flaw, after all the majority of FPS games allow jumping and crouching. Paying a chunk of money and still having to press a button to manoeuvre seems like a bit of a waste. Prone is obviously a problem for both systems.

That doesn't mean I'm not impressed by the Omni, I am. I just think there are better solutions coming along behind it, which likely would be even further away without the Omni in the first place.

@getyeryayasout:

Personally, I'd like to see a solution where you just wear sensors around your ankles. Half-step forward with your right foot and you walk forward, full-step forward and you run. That kind of thing.

Sure you could do that, but would it be as much fun? When you stop moving and your character continues on, it's going to break that fragile sense of presence that's so important in VR.

Yeah I know but it still doesn't change the fact that that pillar is way too close, allhtough this is still in development , so they'll probably put the pillar further out.

This will also ask for more space and probably even more money.