Walking In A VR Future

neol'schmoe writes "There's a new solution to the age old problem of physical movement within a virtual world. Researchers in Japan have come up with tiles that move in concert with a user's pace and motion to allow free range of motion while literally walking in a virtual environment and never leaving a very small area in the real world."

Comments

exercise while gaming...

[ryane67]

getting exercise while gaming would be nice for once... but It sure would suck when you try to roll/duck behind something in a FPS and you fall off the tiles and bust your ankle.. There's no way they can predict and keep up that well.

Holodeck coming soon?

[stratjakt]

Is it?

Those japanese are always inventing stuff like this. I guess they got no square footage.

My American answer is to put your VR goggles on in the middle of one of our spacious fields or parks, and just run around all you want.

Drop someone in the middle of the desert with his LCD goggles and mo-cap mittens and he can VR his brains out.

What about the nausea problem?

[Jaywalk]

There's a new solution to the age old problem of physical movement within a virtual world.

IIRC it's not exactly new, Star Trek uses something like it to explain holodeck movement, although there's the usual handwaving about "force fields" instead of moving tiles. But the real issue is going to be nausea. The problem occurs both in VR situations and in more prosaic settings like motion sickness. If what your eyes tell you (you're moving) is out of sync with what your inner ear tells you (you're not moving) a lot of people get nauseous and toss their cookies. That's why folks who get car sick are okay if they keep looking out the window; their eyes tell them that they're moving, so it's in sync with their inner ear.

Could definitely be a downer if you're the next in line for that arcade game.

Re:What about the nausea problem?

[JavaLord]

ut the real issue is going to be nausea. The problem occurs both in VR situations and in more prosaic settings like motion sickness. If what your eyes tell you (you're moving) is out of sync with what your inner ear tells you (you're not moving) a lot of people get nauseous and toss their cookies.

I suffer from this very badly. I couldn't play the early Doom or Quake games. I tried out a VR game at Great Adventure around 1995/1996 and it made me horribly sick and dizzy.

The strange part is, I couldn't play FPS games without getting tired/dizzy up until around 1999. I was stuck at home after sugery and doped up on painkillers I played FPS games all weekend. For some reason I have no problems with certain games after that(unreal tournament) while others still give me the dizzy sickness. (almost any console FPS). Bracelets and Nausea pills don't do anything for it. :/

Is there a way to train your inner ear/eyes to not get sick if you play enough? Or is it that higher frame rates help? Ugg

Re:What about the nausea problem?

[stratjakt]

Do people get motion sick on treadmills?

Yes, they do. If you go to the gym long enough, you'll see someone get dizzy or nausious and fall right off 'em.

They even have lil warning labels advising people with inner ear problems to stay off.

I wouldn't expect the average slashdotter has seen a treadmill in actual use.

Multiple people?

[Ced_Ex]

Will this work if you have a group of people and you all scatter in different directions?

What if you jump?

... oh, wow ...

[ninjagin]

I've been waiting for something like this for years. VR games and VR/VRML worlds have needed this like crazy for the longest time.

I can already think of improvements:

1. Scale up the 4-tile model for walking, and have a 12-tile model for running.

2. Force-feedback tiles for seismic or moving-walkway effectts.

3. cushiony lifting-tiles to simulate low-g walks/runs/jumps.

Of course, can you imagine the liability issues for a manufacturer of such a product?

Very neat. I can't wait to have one. When they have it work with Unreal Tournament, I'll be sold.

Bradbury fans all agree...

[loteck]

Just think, one day you can install a room in your super-computer-enabled house that will allow your children to imagine virtual adventures that they can play out, without ever leaving the house!

Would be a parent's dream!

Just hope your kids like you and don't enjoy the company of ravenous lions! :D

Re:What about a sphere?

[clacour]

A sphere you walk on top of would probably be easier to construct, but unfortunately, either way has the same problem, because you're wrong about one thing.

It would have to be quite large to seem flat.

Thanks to a helpful page on chords at http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/57832.htm l, here's what I came up:

Assume a 30 inch step.
That makes the short side of the triangle 15 inches.
Start off with a sphere 10 feet in radius (20 feet in diameter).
15/120 = .0125, which is the sine of the triangle. Cosine(arcsine(short/hypotenuse))=0.94 inches.

A 1 inch height difference would certainly be noticed by me.

Assuming a 0.1 inch difference as small enough to be ignored, your sphere would have to be about 94 feet in radius. (And remember, that's radius. It's almost 200 feet in diameter.

Considering that's what would be required for each person in the game, I think what they've got is definite improvement.

I'm not impressed by the photo, though. It doesn't look like you could (safely) take a step forward, unless those blocks are really fast.

To anyone who complains that I should have done that in metric:
A) I'm a Merkin. (See alt.fan.pratchett on Usenet) We're allowed.
B) I'm at work and trying to be reasonably honest with my employer's time...

Re:What about a sphere?

[xygorn]

While we are looking at other alternatives: If we are already using remotely controlled wheels that stay under your feet, why don't we just attach the wheels to the shoes. Basically, multi-directional roller skates with controlled wheels should be able to do the same thing, with a lot less complexity