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Omnidirectional Treadmill: The Ultimate FPS Input Device?
MojoKid writes "The concept of gaming accessories may have just been taken to a whole new level. A company called Virtuix is developing the Omni, which is essentially a multidirectional treadmill that its creators call 'a natural motion interface for virtual reality applications.' The company posted a video showing someone playing Team Fortress 2 and using the Omni along with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. You can see in the video how much running and movement this fellow performs. With something like the Omni in your living room, you'd likely get into pretty good shape in no time. Instead of Doritos and Mountain Dew, folks might have to start slamming back Power Bars and Gatorade for all night gaming sessions."
The whole point of gaming is to sit on your ass and avoid the elements drink caffeine till you shake and eat a dehydrated cow. If I wanted exercise and shooting I'd go play paintball.
While it's not as bad as VirtuaSphere, I think I'll wait a little longer for a brain-computer interface.
Mountain Dew and Doritos are not substantially different, health-wise, from Gatorade and PowerBars.
Didnt they have this in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One ?
You almost had me, but this looks like it could be dangerously close to exercise. Pass.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
This, if any of you remember, is one of the key items of the Star Trek holodeck. The Technical manual showed users on an omnidirectional treadmill (probably using forcefields rather than an actual treadmill), which the holodeck routed to wherever there was space if there were more than one user and they were in different locations of the program.
Isn't this somewhat reminiscent of part of the VR hardware shown in the 1994 film?
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Very cool but I would imagine this is much easier to use in games like Battlefield, ARMA, and Day Z where you aren't going to be doing too much close quarters fighting (TF2, Counter Strike, etc.). I can move my mouse faster than I can turn my head. Not to mention, the large maps on those games will definitely give you a nice workout.
Whenever I try to walk on a step that isn't there, or if I misjudge the slope of the ground, I stumble. So should the simulation become to engrossing and you get distracted, you'll end up on your face the first time you try to navigate some uneven virtual terrain and the floor is still level.
If you've read the book.... you'd know what I mean.
anchored inplace while climbing a slippery slope, sounds like most gamers. I hope it works, but the price will doom it to niche markets.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Very cool, but your inner ear is going to break the illusion - just as your retinal muscles are going to remind you that it isn't quite depth you're seeing with that stereoscopic headset.
Progress of technology - new ways of getting motion sickness!
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
There was a report done on Science, that were have discovered so much that its hard to discover new things, same with IT and stuff... i think its reached entropy where there just isnt that much to report on.
if you want more to report on, stop complaining and do something about it. its easy to complain, harder to do!
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
"falling down on the treadmill" -- you obviously didn't even bother to click the link to the article and watch the pictures.
Has netcraft confirmed it?
Just a slippery surface while wearing slippery shoes. The idea has been around since at least the 1990s.
Real omnidirectional treadmills exist, first started as a DoD project. You can walk naturally on them, as demonstrated here and here.
It's still debatable which method is superior or more practical.
The problem is that the guy is carrying a 'gun' but you're still aiming with your head (i.e. the Oculus).
This has been done better before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQR49JGySTM
FWIW Power Bars and Gatorade are only marginally better for you than Doritos and Mountain Dew. Both are loaded with over-processed crap. It's reasonable to say that the former are actually worse because no one is going to think eating doritos and dew is healthy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
going to hurt when you feel that ducking or rolling is the way to get out of trouble in the game! :-)
Someone had to say it.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I'm pretty sure he is. Note how he stands still to aim...
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
"Timmy, stop slouching off and come play some video games! You need some exercise!"
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
The only thing missing from this news article is a hyperlink embedded with an affiliate code. That, and anything news worthy. Product releases are generally not news.
The difference in salt is relatively unimportant.
Unless you really are dehydrated, which is why Gatorade marketing is aimed at "re-hydrating" people who don't know when it's time to sit down and drink some tap water. Doctors were using similar "salt" drinks (in powdered form) to prevent/treat dehydration long before someone put it in a fancy bottle.
For those who may not know. The first sign of dehydration is muscle aches (usually the legs), people who are running around expect muscle aches in the legs so may miss the warning signs. Sick kids are at a much higher risk of serious dehydration from prolonged bouts of vomiting, if your vomiting child complains about sore legs/arms, give them a "sports drink" with high potassium (or a banana), and take them to a real doctor immediately.
Disclaimer: IANA real doctor, not even an internet doctor, just a run of the mill grandad who's dealt with his fair share of vomiting children.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Perhaps one day we'll have Star Trek style holodecks. And that will be great. Until the point - roughly 10 minutes after the first trial - when people realise that if they're really bad at running around doing atheletic stuff in real life, they're also going to be really bad at it on a holodeck like that.
I think controllers which try to make games more immersive by having them mimic real life activities are (with a few exceptions I'll touch on later) missing the point.
That isn't to say that games shouldn't try to be immersive and that controllers don't have a role to play in immersion. However, given that in most games, the player is doing things he wouldn't be able to do in real life, simply trying to translate real-life controls into the game isn't going to work. In most genres, the best thing the controls can do is let the player forget that they are there at all. They need to be the most efficient means possible of translating the player's will into the behaviour of his on-screen avatar.
Every time a player dies (or otherwise fails, depending on genre) in game due to control issues, the immersion is broken. I can think of some really awful examples here, going back decades. Remember Ultima VIII, as it was at launch? Those jumps across the moving platforms, where a mis-step meant death? Remember how you could see precisely what you needed to do to get across, but how the atrocious point and click control inputs made each and every jump an exercise in trial, error and sheer luck? And remember how much it broke the immersion every time you failed - reminded you that you weren't the Avatar exploring a strange land, but a player wrestling with a cumbersome interface and control system? That one was bad enough that they eventually patched it (turning it from "atrocious" to "just about tolerable").
Or more recently, take the Super Mario Galaxy games. I enjoyed both of these immensely - until the point at which it became necessary to use the spin-jump to make certain jumps. See, "spin jump" was mapped to "waggle the Wii-mote". And "waggle" is not, on a Wii-mote, a precise input. There's actually a good bit of variation in just how much and how hard you need to waggle before the game will accept that, yes, you have waggled (and I can't believe I've just typed that sentence). So all of a sudden you have a precision platformer which is dependant upon a non-precision input. And even though it's only for one single input, each time you rack up an unnecessary death due to that input going wrong, the immersion is broken.
Or sometimes a game uses a "normal" input device, but because the game adapts itself to that device badly, it still ends up feeling broken. Resident Evil 6 is a case in point here. I've played this on the 360 and the PC and found the 360 version effectively unplayable, due to control issues. I don't normally object to playing shooters on a console controller (though I'd prefer mouse and keyboard), but the shooters in question need to make concessions to the fact that they're being played on a device less suited to precise aim. Actually, many console shooters these days do that well; snap-to aim, relatively generous hitboxes and slow-moving enemies may not always make for the most exciting game mechanics, but they do take a lot of the pain out of playing a shooter on a console controller. Resident Evil 6 makes no such concessions; in a game where only headshots do appreciable damage to enemies, aiming at these tiny, fast bobbing targets on a console controller is nigh impossible and the abiding impression I took away from my 360 version was that my in-game character actually had worse accuracy with a gun than I myself would in real life (which is saying something). After that, playing with mouse and keyboard on the PC was a complete revelation - while the game itself still has flaws, it was an order of magnitude better than the console version. By contrast, the recent Tomb Raider reboot makes such good concessions to aiming on a controller that I played it on PC using a 360 control
Is it like a mouse setting where I can set it so that a small mouse movement equates to a large on screen movement with high acceleration? That might be fun, playing Counterstrike with 7 league boots on.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Because you want to be able to play in a limited space; if you have a large space to walk around in, you don't need the treadmill.
just as soon as this beauty can simulate a Quake-world "rocket jump" and leave my legs warm after a "lavadip"
If they eat "Power Bars and Gatorade" while gaming on the treadmill they're still going to be fat... Try water and the occasional banana... or, you know. REAL food
as an option for this, esp. for the tightrope-walking sequences.
Perfect game would have:
- Skyward Sword's / Red Steel 2's motion plus controls for sword and archery, fast-paced combat and camera controls, and balance board for movement
- Xenoblade Chronicles' vast expanses and explorability and quests and story-telling and item management and quantiy of items and gems and crafting
- The Last Story's on-line play and replayability / grinding / upgrade options and colour / dyes
- Pandora's Towers' IR pointing, intricate motion controls and puzzle balance and depth and item crafting and romance (as an option)
- Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga's (or the new Fire Emblem 3DS game's) total character generation and control and multi-generational story-line (as an option)
and downloadable content on an on-going basis.
That's as close as we're getting to a holodeck for the foreseeable future.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Seriously, it's all nice and fine, but please inform me once such input actually gives you better control of your character than keyboard&mouse.
I'm pretty certain, though, that I'll be asleep for a long, long time, mostly because keyboard&mouse actually gives you better control than your body. And please don't tell me it's a matter of exercise. Unless the game is specifically written for this kind of input, k&m will triumph. Simply because the game was written for THAT kind of input.
FPS games do "dumb down" controls considerably to make them compatible with k&m (or if you really have to, console controller) input, or they'd be unplayable. It all starts with locking weapon aim and FOV. There is simply no really good way to decouple "where you shoot" and "where you look" without making it an input nightmare. Some games offer some way to "look around" without moving your aim, but in 9 out of 10 situations you wouldn't want that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually, a lot fewer sales. DNF actually sold because people were interested in it. People won't be interested in this as they don't want to wear themselves out in 7 hour sessions of Halo 12. This will likely go down as the least successful gaming controller of all time - and I'm saying that as someone who bought a power glove for the NES.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You may ener when ready.
Games may be the first application that comes to mind.
But, combine this with a virtual presence robot, and companies will be able to save millions on travel to conferences and meetings.
There's a huge market for this, if you can get the user experience right.
It's not the quantity that bothers me. It's the quality. Everyone's talking programmer cliches (unfit, no real life friends) and no one's asking how the 2 dimensional treadmill works.
So, anyone knows how it works?
As are kneeling, crawling, zooming, jumping. backpedaling, activating stuff (opening doors etc.) and other functions. I would also venture a guess that rotation gets done a lot quicker on the PC than on a treadmill as I didn't notice the kid moving much more than 40-60 degrees in any direction in a hurry. I'm guessing because the system is slow or inaccurate in response to this type of movement.
And I'm sure I can "easily" win using these techniques, when fighting someone who hasn't got those options.
While it may just be a matter of integrating these functions into the controller (possibly in the gun), these are lacking, and often used functions. I also see some limitations in that it would probably be difficult to integrate this into tank/airplane/helo movement, for vehicles, and chutes, ropes, ladders and ziplines in other games. But for a customized game this would be nice. Unfortunately I have seen too many controllers that only support a few games die because they lack the option to be used in other games. Light guns, VR goggles, the 360 orb, the gaming glove and a few others spring to mind (Yes, I have spent far too much cash on gaming, I know)
I'd love to back the development though, and will definitely sign up for the kickstarter when it goes public. I'd also love to buy one of these eventually.... But I doubt my GF would let me keep it....
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
I'll just leave this here: Ultimate Battlefield 3 Simulator - Build & Test (Full Video) - The Gadget Show
Camping during a FPS should become much more popular.
I watched the whole thing expecting the guy to try and rocket jump. What a waste of time.
"if devices like kinect can measure leg [movement]... why need treadmill for input?"
So you don't run forward 4 feet and crash into the screen?
At least, until you try to play Portal while using it.
Talk about mixed vestibular cues!
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
That would be great for playing World of World of Warcraft
Next step is real force feedback - I'm thinking of a fast moving boxing glove on a robot arm that can position itself within a fraction of a second.
A head shot will never be the same again (system can do head tracking to stop you ducking the punch).
Imagine a portal jump with real feedback. A car crash in a racing game?
You could have an axe on a robot arm for simulating medieval battle games.
Gimme. Now.
Why don't you read the linked article and skip evrything except the youtube video?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Paintball and laser tag for the non-lethal.
An omni-directional treadmill with a good VR headset with decent resolution is probably more expensive than the equipment for either paintball or laser tag, both of which have the best resolution and "simulation of reality" of all.
War is the ultimate FPS. But that's the most expensive version of all.
--
BMO
The biggest issue I see is that the ring which fits around your waist to help orient the screen is too small for the average gamer. Their fat bellies won't fit inside and could possibly do damage to the system.
This means these people will have to *gasp* get off their fat asses, do exercise first so they can slim down, THEN use this device.
As that involves effort, you can forget about it.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Now I can be prepared both mentally and physically once the zombie apocalypse strikes!
Cynyr's point is that the cinematographer's concept of relevant may differ from that of a particular viewer.
I'd say it sounds like you need to find better people to play with
I was under the impression that it's a lot more practical to find a different pickup group of people online than to find people in real life. Not having to coordinate schedules is part of why people have switched from same-screen multiplayer and LAN parties with friends to online play with strangers.
I'm sick of FPS multiplayer games where the other players are hopping around like damn rabbits
Then perhaps the modelers need to start giving the characters rabbit ears.
..when they hear their phone ring?
Confusion++?
Is the guy in the demonstration aiming with the gun in his hands or aiming with his eyes? It's hard to tell exactly but it looks like at this level the gun plays little roll in the apparatus other then a nifty trigger device.
Traditionally looking and aiming have been synonymous since Quake (looking up and down wasn't introduced in Doom) but now for this kind of equipment they'll need a way to track the place the weapon is aiming independently from the where the eyes are looking (imagine putting the gun over your shoulder to shoot someone behind you when you hear their footsteps.)
Does anyone know if it's possible to do this by only modifying the client side code? I would think part of valve's anti-cheat stuff includes checks / balances to make sure the player is actually facing the place he's shooting.
Players who are able to do this will have a distinct advantage over players who are just sitting around in their chairs having their aim limited by their field of view. In fact, it would probably 'win the war' so to speak...
The Blade Itself
? Because the YouTube video doesn't say how it works.
The treadmill in action. I am likewise reminded of Sisyphus.
A comparison follows. Power Bar vs a Banana.
240 kcal (30 from fat) --- A banana has 200. 6.2 calories from fat.
3g fat (1g saturated fat) --- A banana has 1gram of total fat, Negligible saturated fat.
200mg sodium --- A banana has 2mg
45g carbs (3g from fiber, 25g from sugar) --- A banana has 51, 28 from sugars, 6 from fiber, 12 from starch
8g protein --- A banana has 2.5g
70%dv Vitamin C --- A banana has 33
25%dv Calcium Iron and B6 --- A banana has 1% Calcium, 3%Iron, and 41% B6
15%dv Thiamin --- A banana has 5%
10%dv Riboflavin. --- A banana has 10%
A banana is lower cal, lower sodium, nearly equivalent amount of sugars, twice the fiber, a third the fat (and no bad fat), much more B6, same amount of Riboflavin, and a bunch of extras that are good for you, like a quarter of your daily Potassium requirements. While it doesn't have the same amount of Vitamin C, Calcium, and Iron, you can get that from the rest of your diet.
And the banana is cheaper, by a lot.
Moar banana stats:
Amounts Per Selected Serving%DV
Calories200 (837 kJ)10%
From Carbohydrate186 (779 kJ)
From Fat6.2 (26.0 kJ)
From Protein8.2 (34.3 kJ)
Carbohydrates
Amounts Per Selected Serving%DV
Total Carbohydrate 51.4g 17%
Dietary Fiber 5.9g23%
Starch 12.1g
Sugars 27.5g
Vitamins
Amounts Per Selected Serving%DV
Vitamin A 144IU 3%
Vitamin C 19.6mg 33%
Vitamin D~ ~
Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol) 0.2mg 1%
Vitamin K 1.1 mcg 1%
Thiamin 0.1mg 5%
Riboflavin 0.2mg 10%
Niacin 1.5mg 7%
Vitamin B 60.8mg 41%
Folate 45.0mcg 11%
Vitamin B 120.0mcg 0%
Pantothenic Acid 0.8mg 8%
Choline 22.0mg
Betaine 0.2mg
Minerals
Amounts Per Selected Serving%DV
Calcium 11.3mg 1%
Iron 0.6mg 3%
Magnesium 60.8mg 15%
Phosphorus 49.5mg 5%
Potassium 806mg 23%
Sodium 2.3mg 0%
Zinc 0.3mg 2%
Copper 0.2mg 9%
Manganese 0.6mg 30%
Selenium 2.3mcg 3%
--
BMO
P.S. A banana and a large black coffee is what gets me through cardio.
I said 33 percent for Potassium in the direct comparison, but later "a quarter" and "23%" lower down. The latter two are correct. The first is not.
Also...
I didn't give a reference. Fail.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1846/2
--
BMO
It looked to me that the waist band that keeps you from falling on your face like a tard was linked to orientation, but I could not tell for certain. IF it was, then strafing should be possible. (and, obviously, required to bring it to market for any decent game).
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Watched the TF2 video, didn't once see him jump or strafe. And looked like he had a hard time aiming straight down. If anything, looks like this will make things more difficult, sadly.
Also, if I have to run as fast as the Scout does when playing that class, gonna have a heart attack.
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