VR startups: Stop trying to make virtual reality treadmills a thing
IMAGE: CYBERITH
Virtual reality treadmills are a bad idea and they're never going to be a thing that appeals to the masses.
But first a little history lesson. In 2012, a then-20-year-old Palmer Luckey put up a campaign on Kickstarter asking for support to help make his Oculus Rift VR headset a reality. The crowdfunding campaign asked for $250,000 and by the end it got more than $2.4 million.
Needless to say, geeks around the world were psyched for VR.
SEE ALSO: Oculus has figured out hand input for VR, and it's called Oculus Touch
As the Oculus Rift headset became synonymous with modern VR, swarms of startups started popping up left and right with VR products that promised to add to the realistic immersion.
One such product was the Virtuix Omni, a treadmill resembling a baby walker — but for adults!
The Omni sprang up as a solution to a problem that may or may not be crucial to VR in the long run. Short of strapping myriad sensors to your leg or using a Kinect-based 3D depth camera to track your movements, there really is no natural and realistic way to move around in VR.
Sure, you can use a game controller's analog stick to move around, but it doesn't have the same immersion effect as moving your real legs. With no solid solution available yet, it's also why many first-person shooter games for VR don't involve much camera movement, opting for more on-rails gameplay instead.
The Omni's pitch: It could turn your real walking into movement inside of a video game. Walk and your in-game soldier walks. Run and your soldier runs, too.
The Omni promised to put the reality into virtual reality.
The Omni promised to put the reality into virtual reality.
OK, it sounded cool. I'm a geek and I rolled with it.
At the time in 2013, I was writing for DVICE (a defunct tech blog) and had attended E3, where I had a chance to meet with Jan Goetgeluk, the company's founder. That day is one I'll never forget because I had tried the original Oculus Rift developer kit and then 20 minutes later tried the 1080p version, and then an hour after that, found myself strapped in the first prototype of the Omni. It was a whole lot of VR immersion to take in during one day.
None of that changed my preconceived expectations for the Omni, though: That it's a big, ridiculous and expensive contraption that isn't fun to use or set up at home.
The prototype Omni didn't fit me (I'm 5-foot-5). It also didn't fit my then editor who is about 6 feet tall. Of course it didn't, it was designed for Goetgeluk, whose height fell in between ours.
Getting in the Omni was a huge pain in the ass. There were tons of straps and harnesses that kept me securely locked, gripping my crotch in all kinds of uncomfortable ways. Then I had to put on these special shoes to walk inside of the thing. Not simple at all.
When it came time to use the damn thing, I quickly learned that walking on the Omni was different from walking in real life. Instead of relaxed leg movements, my feet had to slap at the Omni's base and then peel away like some kind of sea otter walking on land.
I had a plastic gun in one hand and was trying to walk and shoot, but the experience was anything but fun. In fact,
it was work — serious work
it was work — serious work. Before the demo even finished, I tapped out, letting my editor swap places with me.
At E3 2015, the Omni was no longer in a hotel room far away from the crowded masses at the Los Angeles Convention Center, but had its own booth right by the Oculus VR booth.
IMAGE: CYBERITH
The company had several Omni treadmills set up for people to try and while the product looked a little more polished with a nice black paint job and some green accents, it still looked stupid.
And this isn't the critic in me just trying to trounce all over a product. Almost everyone I saw trying out the Omni looked horribly uncomfortable. If it weren't for the harnesses and slings securing them in, they'd all have tripped over themselves attempting to run inside of the structure.
The worst part is, the Omni wasn't the only VR treadmill at E3. Cyberith's Virtualizer, which is a clone of the Omni, but with spring-loaded panels that let you jump and crouch, was right next door to it. Another difference is the Virtualizer comes with booties that slip over your own sneakers and shoes.
I tried both the new Omni and the Virtualizer and although the latter felt better and offered more range of motion,
I still felt like an adult inside of a super-sized baby walker
I still felt like an adult inside of a super-sized baby walker.
Gamers are always geeking out about immersion this and immersion that. The graphics need to be photorealistic until they resemble the uncanny valley. The sound needs to be mixed in for real-life spatial awareness. The physics need to be grounded in reality. And now, with VR, the controls have to mimic reality; we should be completely one with our digital avatars.
As much as I'd love to be able to walk in real life and have my video game character do the same on the screen, existing setups like these VR treadmills just don't work.
Who in their rightful mind is going to put one of these monstrosities in their living rooms? They're huge and weigh a ton for a game accessory. The Omni is 55 inches wide in diameter and weighs 160 pounds, and the Virtualizer is 40 inches wide in diameter and weighs 110 pounds. These accessories aren't like Rock Band's plastic instruments that you can just toss in a corner or a small closet. You need serious space to store and set one up.
I'm all for pushing the boundaries of VR input, but if it looks cumbersome, isn't something you can easily jump into and start up, it's just never going to succeed.
There will be the nerds who already preordered — the Omni is $699 and the Virtualizer is $1,249 — and are patiently waiting for their VR treadmills to ship by the end of the year, but everyone else is going to give them one look and just laugh and walk away.
Mom's definitely not going to voluntarily hop in one.
Mom's definitely not going to voluntarily hop in one.
A more practical VR accessory may be the VirZoom — sensors that connect to a bike and a VR headset and turn pedaling into movement. That to me, makes more sense, will be far cheaper, and will be more entertaining than any of these outrageous VR treadmills.
If you disagree with everything I've said, and think the treadmills will motivate you to work out more while getting in some gaming, I implore you to look out a window. See that street out there? It's free and you can walk on it — normally without any special frictionless shoes and without needing any harnesses.
Maybe one day we'll get an Oculus Touch for our legs or Kinect will become sophisticated enough to track our leg movements accurately. Who knows what will happen. But until that day comes, it's probably a smart idea to skip these death traps.
