The weird past and inevitable future of VR treadmills

the idea of physically stepping into virtual reality is an astounding concept almost as old as the idea of vr itself omnidirectional treadmills are an elaborate and complicated piece of technology designed to do exactly this and for this video i researched the interesting history of these devices to examine both the past and future of this niche turned household gadget from our dystopian future that's literally arrived at my doorstep let's talk about odts [Music] hey guys and welcome back to the virtual reality show where we talk about any and all things related to virtual reality inside virtual reality i'm your host fia if you've ever tried on a vr headset one of the first things you've probably noticed is the mental disconnect between you and your physical body when exploring a virtual world navigating with a controller while immersed in 3d environment rather than using your own body can lead to cyber sickness and a break and immersion as your brain struggles to adapt your senses to the simulation the misaligned information from your brain to your body causes what we know as the vr locomotion problem along with devices like shoes and gerbil balls omni-directional treadmills look to fix exactly that for this video i deep dived into odts as both a technology and concept to highlight why these niche products are important to our future as well as where they even came from in the first place if you spend a lot of time in virtual reality already you've probably heard of the first consumer level odt released called the catwalk c whose company even sent me a unit which sparked the burning curiosity inside me to create this omnidirectional deep dive so what even is an omnidirectional treadmill well it's the most straightforward device for providing unencumbered 360 degree movement in any direction with the purpose of exploring virtual environments using your entire body different innovators have thought of this concept in quite a few ways to create them at this point all with the hope to increase immersiveness through engaging the entire physical body within a specified space vr headsets date way back to the 60s but it wasn't until three decades later that there was even a working prototype model for an omnidirectional treadmill to accompany them so let's time travel back to far before my time the 1990s the first omnidirectional treadmill was patented by david carmane in 1996 and was funded by you guessed it the us military ah the greatest love story ever told war and technology it was the third iteration of locomotion developed for the united states strike command following the unicycle-styled pedaling uniport of 1994 and the single-directional tread port of 1995 that allowed upper torso directional reactivity this six and a half by seven foot bulk of tech weighed in at a massive 1200 pounds and was 15 feet tall it had an outer and inner treadmill constructed on top of each other made up of over 3 000 rollers with the top roller belt treadmill perpendicular to the bottom one the way the rollers cradled and rotated allowed the user to walk in arbitrary directions while using the device because the device was intended for military training it found its home at the army research lab of orlando florida but meanwhile across the pond dr hiro iwata was building a belt-based treadmill at the virtual reality lab of university tsukuba japan just north of tokyo after experimenting with his virtual per ambulator his 1999 invention was the taurus treadmill an odt built of 12 smaller treadmill belts built in the shape of an elongated torus driven in a perpendicular direction the magnetic sensors below the user's feet would move in the opposite direction to cancel the motion of each step definitely an upgrade from a piece of paper on the floor so skip a few years to 2003 and we see the new kid on the block the odbp the omnidirectional ball bearing disc platform was created by the department of computer science and information engineering at tam kang university in taiwan whose service consisted of moving balls constrained within a concave walking surface the users would move the balls while walking with a harness strapped onto them for counter force man gotta love balls the same year tam kang university was tripping on balls the us army started throwing money at the cyber walk project a second generation belt-based odt that evolved into its own research project in 2008 funded by the european sixth framework program to a team consisting of a bunch of german researchers this one was based on the tourist design of iwata's odt but i quote developed and implemented several new design solutions to overcome some of the shortcomings in iwata's original design these included improvements to normal walking speeds a stronger ability to change speed and direction compensations for walking velocity and higher safety measures for users with no previous walking experience in mind the cyber walk was 5 meters long on each side and used a vicon motion capturing system the mocap system would monitor the user's position and then compute estimates for their speed and direction to adjust the belts beneath them accordingly basically meaning that if you walk too far away from the center the machine just pushes you back without abruptly throwing you off balance once the 20 teens rolled around a few years after this project we were met with the birth of oculus also marking the birth of consumer vr 2012 started this era of your commercialization with the launch of the original oculus kickstarter but the building hype towards vr was growing outside of that with major odd companies getting their start quickly after the virtux omni kickstarter launched in 2013 raising 1.1 million alone for their original odt campaign which has made them a hot name ever since considering in 2013 barely anyone had their hands on vr to begin with cat vr also had their formation in 2013 and finally put out their kickstarter in 2015 for the original iteration of their catwalk slide mill treadmill slide mills seem to be the best type of at-home omnidirectional treadmills we can get our hands on for the time being but anyone who's watched ready player 1 probably has noticed that weed watts's home setup resembles that of the belted nature of the moving ones i mentioned from the 90s and 2000s well believe it or not the treadmill he uses in the movie is actually a real omni-directional treadmill made by a real company with maybe just a little movie magic thrown in that we don't even have to wait for to exist infinidex started up in 2015 shortly before the release of the oculus rift cv1 as the founder was good friends with oculus founder palmer lucky and wanted to wait for the true vr commercialization phase before pushing his own odt company this treadmill takes after the cyber walk in a lot of ways but drops its massive size down allowing it to even fit inside a six by six foot play space and adds a support ring around the waist to compensate for easy stability i personally find the design of the infinidek to be the most straightforwardly appealing odt i've seen but we don't know at what point we'll even have any hope for a consumer version they don't give their prices out anywhere online and the only article i've seen claims that it'll sell from 40 to 60k which seems ridiculous but i also wouldn't be too surprised considering that their clients are likely going to be aimed at professional training simulations funded by the government there are still other companies that have also spread it out in recent times each trying to bring their own solution to the vr locomotion problem table vr is growing in popularity which means that more and more eyes and brains are being brought to the odt concept as a whole which leads us to the present after cat vr's success with their professional level catwalk side mill they launched another kickstarter in 2020 for their consumer level product the catwalk c it raised 1.6 million on kickstarter demonstrating how adamantly excited so many of us vr fans are to really get our feet dirty in virtual mud cats themselves kindly sent me a unit and after trying this thing out for the first time my curiosity of odts and the importance of this one being for consumers seemed more interesting than just a product review after hopping in vr to talk with a cat representative i think i realized the importance of a product like this being available for this price so first of all we need some freedom of movement but we also need some stability right we need to be able to move up and down to jump but at the same time we need to be safe we need to provide the treadmill that is lightweight and compact but it also needs to be durable so these are the things that are really really difficult to achieve together because they always stand in opposition with one another i don't think even i had a true appreciation for how incredible this thing is before now at first glance you might see it as a clunky piece of metal but there's a whole history here built off the story i'd hopes of previous generation reality explorers it's a gay that lets you actually walk into the virtual reality because when you have a headset you got a window right you have a place to look through when you have your controllers of course you can try to push yourself through the window together your head and hands but you still cannot fully physically experience what's in there and we believe a treadmill gives you an actual gait to walk through and experience the virtual reality although cats sent me this unit this video is not a review about the catwalk c my honest thoughts are that it's far from feeling natural it feels constrained being in a waist harness sliding around it's pretty loud just to hop in on at any time of the day it's not a product i would use on a regular basis as a daily vr user but when you stop to realize that this is the first affordable iteration of a long awaited niche futuristic piece of hardware technology that's been fantasized about since the idea of vr itself was first conceptualized well i think it's got a lot going for it it's not tens of thousands of dollars or only available to the military it's a way for you and i both for the first time to physically step into these imaginary worlds we've been dreaming about since we were children while catwalk c is the first of its kind we do have to keep an eye out for companies like virtue weeks that have already dabbled in shipping out odt units with kickstarter for upcoming projects in the near future the virtual reality ball has started rolling which means that interesting growth in this sort of tech is going to be sliding up an exponential graph from here on out i found out a lot about odts and vr locomotion through the making of this video and as someone who knows nothing about engineering it's kind of special how i got interested in this treadmill slide mills rotating ball mills there's a lot that's been made and more to come odts are big and bulky and most likely will stay this way even as they get better and cheaper just because of the nature of what they do they aren't convenient or easy to use by any means which is a big deterrent for people who may love vr and even have the money for this reason i'm honestly not sure they'll ever become a common commodity even among your enthusiasts but i do believe that for those such as myself with a burning desire to explore every inch of the infinite frontier that is virtual reality there is something bright right now below our the immediate horizon if you enjoyed this video then please give it a like and subscribe to the virtual reality show channel this was a long time coming and a lot of work to research since there's very little information about the history of omnidirectional treadmills anywhere online huge thanks to cat vr for sending me a unit and inspiring me to make this video if you want to keep up to date with me and my adventures then follow my twitter also supporting my patreon is the best way to directly allow me to create more videos just like this anyways thanks so much for watching i've been your host fia and i'll see you in the next video bye special thanks to this month's patreon members and virtual vips black amethyst diamond clucole mr cheerio neopasm miler

Channel: The Virtual Reality Show

Views: 309,692

Keywords: virtual reality, vr, omnidirectional treadmill, vr treadmill, odt, omni directional treadmills, treadmill, kat vr, kat walk c, virtuix omni, infinadeck, ready player one, ready player one treadmill, military training vr, cyberwalk, virtual, vr tech, vr news, origin, history, first omnidirectional treadmill, oculus quest 2, full body tracking, vrchat full body tracking, quest 2 full body tracking, slide mill, vtuber, phia, ready player two, rpo, running in vr, vr motion sickness

Id: NN5RjAW8TV0

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 16 2022