It's FINALLY HERE! VR Omni-Directional Treadmill... and it's INSANE!

[Music] probably one of my biggest gripes about modern vr is that we're kind of stuck with thumbsticks to control almost all movement within vr like we're on some console or something it's crazy to me that we're in virtual reality but we're still relying on these old control methods however that may be all in the past because today we're going to take a look at the very first vr omnidirectional treadmill or slide mill i suppose and look at everything good and everything bad about the catwalk c and we're gonna see if this thing is actually worth the fourteen hundred dollars cat vr is asking i've been waiting a long time to bring this video to you guys this is our first look and possibly a look at what the future of locomotion looks like for virtual reality as a whole so it's finally here i've been waiting almost a year to get my hands or i guess feet on a catwalk c just to give you some background on what this thing actually is it's basically an omnidirectional treadmill to be used in vr if you've read or watched ready player one a similar looking device is used and what it does is simple with the catwalk you're actually walking or running and spoiler in some games it's actually really incredible but let me clear some stuff up this obviously is not a treadmill i mean there are no treads or moving parts under your feet more accurately i'd probably place this as a slide mill since that's exactly how it works and in order to walk in vr using this device you're walking in real life and sliding your feet across the surface all while wearing some slippery shoes and foot trackers the catwalk then remaps that directional input on a thumbstick and that's it you're moving setup was surprisingly easy it comes with the bases a few rods the harness a bag of screws and base pieces and of course the shoes assembly was relatively quick taking about 30 minutes and the software was a simple download launch and calibration and was pretty much all set the catwalk c does come in a few different sizes depending on if you're really tall or really short but i have the large version here able to accommodate anyone from five foot ten to six foot seven the standard version from five foot five to five foot ten and both of them with a maximum weight capacity of 288 pounds or 130 kilograms and it's not like this takes up a ton of space this likely can fit in most people's rooms as it's only four foot by four foot however it is pretty heavy and it's a real pain in the butt to move around weighing 128 pounds by itself the harness itself is really beefy and i think the only major complaints i have with the appearance or quality of the catwalk are the shoes this is kind of a hard device to give demos on because other people have different size shoes and i'll have to order different shoes for every person i give a demo for plus after walking and running for a long time i don't know if anybody really wants to put these shoes on they uh you know their shoes and the shoes have already seen better days and that kind of sucks because the shoes are arguably one of the most important parts of this entire getup by removing or adding different anti-slip pads you can either make your slide mill experience more or less slippery more friction pads means more stability and less slipperiness but also more fatigue every time you slide or walk and you can remove all of the pads for what cat calls vr pro veteran mode i'm not even joking and you know i just had to try vr veteran pro mode first and here's my very first experience with the catwalk c on the veteran mode [Music] [Laughter] well at least i now know that the harness can fully support my weight and if you're gonna rely on anybody to stress test something maybe stupidly i guess you have your channel right here now just really quick before i talk about my experience i wanna touch on the support for games and headsets but i don't wanna drag on too long because it's legitimately a non-issue i have yet to encounter a steamvr game that doesn't work with it the software is simple enough for anyone to understand and i haven't ran into issues with it and it will work with any vr headset using steamvr quest 2 over airlink or virtual desktop vive index pymax the catwalk c is just a very simple remap of controls name a game it's got support and yes you can use full body tracking i'll just say that now but now that the boring setup and compatibility is out of the way what was my actual experience with the catwalk c and it started exactly how you'd imagine walking using the catwalk was extremely odd and in my first few minutes i remember thinking about how much easier just using a thumbstick was it's not like this was painful or uncomfortable but if you go into using this thing with the mindset that it's an exact one to one to walking you'll probably be immediately disappointed but after only a few minutes the clumsiness of sliding on the catwalk became nearly a non-issue unless i was really being stupid and i was able to walk somewhat normally i found relatively quickly that for some games the catwalk is amazing while others maybe i'm just not good enough with it yet but i'd rather stick with the stick anything narrative or single player or exploratory was simply amazing once i actually had an idea of what i was doing on the catwalk i of course loaded up skyrim vr now i haven't been on this save for a long time and i had no idea where i'd end up when i pressed continue but of course i ended up with around six guards around me trying to kill me and this was a moment in vr i think i will never forget i have been scared in vr i've shouted i've been happy even sad but never in my life have i had a true gut reaction fight or flight until now as soon as i saw the guards i literally sprinted for my life to get away i didn't think about it i didn't feel like i was in a game or in vr or in skyrim i just saw guards around me pulling their swords out and chucking arrows over my head and i had one way to get out and that was a run for my life and this is when i noticed another thing similar to the deca move that uses your waist as the point of locomotion rather than the head or hands like every single vr headset and game out there right now the catwalk uses your waist meaning you can walk or run and look around using your hands totally independently in case you haven't noticed in normal vr you can't just walk and look around at the same time but the catwalk like i said uses your waist so your head and hand are totally independent you can just look around and walk or run it feels really realistic and the same idea goes for no man's sky actually walking around in vr in these massive worlds on the catwalk is an experience like no other and i'm not overstating here using your legs to walk around these worlds gives everything a totally unreal sense of scale and depth i'm not just pushing forward on a stick and gliding or teleporting every foot is a step you have to take and all of a sudden those mountains look a whole lot bigger and further away than they did the last time i played but it's in the best way possible and if you're looking for the next step in immersion holy crap this really is it i almost want to replay half-life alex and bone works in skyrim because it's a totally different experience yes this takes effort i have to move my body like my actual body but you are rewarded for the effort and it's gonna take you a few attempts in slips and slides to get it down but once you learn how to walk again in vr and once you know what it feels like to actually break out in a sprint away or towards something and but also realize that you're doing it safely in a virtual world it's crazily addictive and i'm honestly shocked that vr hardware is good as we have nowadays we're still using teleport and thumbstick it feels so archaic now that i've walked in vr but that's not to say everything is perfect or better with the catwalk if all you play are really competitive games or like beat saber or something you're likely going to be at a huge disadvantage here to be honest yes it feels more realistic and for me it's way more fun but you're clearly at a physical and controlled disadvantage when it comes to playing any vr games competitively with the catwalk if being the absolute best is your number one goal then you're not gonna gain much from using this if i'm in pavlov and getting sweaty or trying to get a few dubs in population one i'm probably just gonna skip using the catwalk entirely and instead use it for the super immersive games like stormland or half-life or bone words it just makes no sense when i'm walking physically exerting energy and someone else is just pressing a thumbstick it's i don't know you're just at a disadvantage and another negative is the noise this thing isn't quiet by any means especially if you're sprinting or running but then again when has running indoors ever really been necessarily quiet if you're surrounded by a very quiet play space or house or your flat has really thin walls then the catwalk c will likely annoy everyone around you but i'm sure you could do some sort of sound dampening if you're really set on having one and i've also heard that over time the materials on the shoe and slide surface aren't as loud once you wear them down but back on the positives another huge one is that you can use these with full body trackers if you want and it looks relatively convincing in vr chat you just have to have a 3.0 avatar with locomotion animation cycles turned off of course you're leaning forward more than usual and uh you're gonna have to mute yourself a lot or use nvidia broadcast so that everyone doesn't hear every time that you walk but it's totally possible and like i said it looks pretty okay and it's uh you know i don't know it's immersive so you know i'm not gonna lie i didn't expect myself to like this as much as i do i thought it was gonna be extremely gimmicky and i don't know cool for a few minutes but i've kind of fell in love with this and i think it's for some reasons i totally didn't expect or really i just overlooked yes this is a giant piece of equipment that's expensive it takes up a bunch of space it's really loud and again it's expensive but it's legitimately the closest i've ever felt to something like ready player one or at least what i imagine being in ready player one feels like like i feel like freaking parsival over here i found myself just walking and walking and occasionally running in skyrim a game i've bought five times and probably finished ten because i realized that even though i've seen all of this before and everything is familiar this was the first time i truly felt like i was in the game not playing a game but i was a living breathing walking member of this virtual world of course i've walked in vr before quite a bit actually and this has totally inspired me to take another look at things like locomotion trackers like the cat loco s but being strapped in and using literally all of my human strength to sprint as fast as i could was an experience like i have never felt before and it's kind of hard to look at vr the same to be real real adrenaline and real endorphins from moving your body i've realized this is more than just some big clunky piece of hardware this is the brain's chemical response to actually moving your body in a very natural way like running away from something and on a very deep down level i legitimately perceive the worlds i'm in in virtual reality just in a different way a far more believable way and i believe that my brain chemistry is helping that when you run or even just walk your brain releases endorphins and chemicals and you even perceive the physical world differently this has been studied to death there's literally study upon study about it now imagine your brain doing that but for stimuli in a virtual world and that's what the catwalk see does at least for me and i think it would do it for you too walking and running in these virtual worlds and literally sweating in them has changed my perception of a lot of things yeah resolution is great and field of view is great and better controllers are amazing but if you're not getting the correct chemicals from your brain nothing's gonna feel believable and i guess it took me literally sprinting away from guards and skyrim to really figure that out but back to earth no way would i ever recommend this to everyone like i said it's big expensive and loud but if you are like me and you like being on the absolute cutting edge of virtual reality and you want to take that next step in immersion i already think that you're the kind of person that would really fall in love with this thing as i have you're gonna trip you're gonna fall you're gonna get frustrated but you'll learn because yes it's actually that good exiting your cockpit and no man's sky to take steps on a completely new planet with your actual legs makes me realize just how massive everything is and how massive these virtual worlds are and it makes you feel very human and small in a game something i haven't really seen replicated in vr to a meaningful level that is until now and jeez i just imagine what would happen if i wore force feedback gloves and a haptic vest and trackers and use the catwalk c all at the same time i think you'll just have to subscribe for that one because uh maybe that's coming and also if you like this just you know give it a like i hate saying this stuff that's why i leave it for the very end if you're here i don't know thank you for being here i love you and thank you to all of my amazing patreon supporters especially my omegas that you see on screen right now i couldn't do any of this without you much love thrill out [Applause] you

Channel: ThrillSeeker

Views: 2,110,440

Rating: 4.9456458 out of 5

Keywords: vr, virtual reality, omnidirectional, treadmill, katwalk, katwalk c, Thrillseeker, oculus, quest, index, quest 2, oculus quest, VR hardware

Id: l1zuLwLLHY0

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/WinTurkey]

I'd consider buying one if I could be sure that it would last for years (boy does that look like a great piece of exercise equipment, just imagine the workout from a game of Skyrim), but that thing is not going to survive for any lengthy period of time.

[u/-ASK_ME_ABOUT_LOOM-]

Looks janky and uncomfortable to use.

For 1400 the build quality doesn't look all that great either. For the little amount it looks like he used it, it was already getting pretty scuffed up, lots of play on the bar holding the waist, etc.

For the few that drop the cash for this, I hope they enjoy it, and that it doesn't become a 1400 dollar clothes rack after a few weeks.

[u/Nison545]

I'm definitely not interested in purchasing this, but maybe 5 or so iterations down the line - man, am I excited for what this COULD be.

[u/Blenderhead36]

I can't find good measurements for it. I have a beefy PCVR rig and space in my home for it, but it's my basement. My basement has a low ceiling, about 6'6" (2 meters). I'm 6'1" and am concerned that I won't actually be able to stand up in this thing. I can't find any measurements about how high the treadmill stands off the ground, only how high the entire unit is.

[u/Zaptruder]

DDR dance pads are to dancing... as Slide mills are to walking and running.

i.e. Notionally representative, using the same bodily limbs as you'd use to do the real thing, but not actually providing the same physical movements or sensations of the real things.

You should only buy a slide mill if you understand as much - this isn't a more immersive way of moving around in VR. It's a different way, one where you use your feet.

It takes up a bunch of space... and is only useful if you play games where roomscale isn't an problem (i.e. unrestricted movement around your room)... and you're looking for decent exercise locomoting around in VR).

Of course... you can achieve similar to better results by simply moving your own two feet in VR in sync with the movement of your character/being in VR - doesn't cost anything, and is actually more immersive than a slide mill, because it doesn't come with a strange sensation of movement, a strap that digs into your torso and thighs, etc. But it does require some degree of 'imagination.'

[u/_Robbie]

Sliding =/= walking. This looks awkward and weird, and $1,400 is an absurd asking price. An omnidirectional treadmill for that price is one thing but a sliding mat with a harness that just holds you in? One that you need specialized shoes for? I feel like there is no way that this sells very well.

[u/ademus05]

I was an early original backer for the Virtuix Omni treadmill that operated on much the same system. Here's my experience:

• The motion was nothing like walking at all. To get a good idea of what the motion feels like, smash your upper torso and face up against a wall and then try running into the wall while wearing socks, slipping on ball bearings.
• Moving and bobbing in VR but not moving in real life was the most motion sickness inducing thing I have ever done in my entire life. After 30 minutes I was rolling on the floor in nausea for 8 hours. I couldn't even look at the device without feeling sick.
• You can't strafe, and you can't really go backwards. This breaks combat in many games.
• Omni also replicated a controller for movement. This caused problems in games where pressing forward on the stick meant moving in the direction you were looking. If you ever looked to the side while walking, it was instant nausea.

I waited years for my Omni and I got rid of it in 2 weeks.

[u/BiggusDickusWhale]

Questionable durability aside, it seems weird to have made the diameter so small. This thing already takes up a ton of space, why not at least make the leg motion feel like a normal step in that case?