VR treadmills and the the case of Virtuix Omni Gaming Treadmill

Posted by Dionysios Georgios Papadimitriou
HTI student

Hey folks! :-D

The VR technologies nowadays are slowly being gradually introduced into our everyday lives. During the last five years, we have observed the rise of Head-Mounted displays becoming accessible to the public audiences through companies such as Oculus Rift and now Valve with SteamVR.

To the left, the Oculus Rift headset. To the right, Valve's VR headset.

Virtual Reality! We are observing the growth of a new, intuitive and exciting technological field in our time! 

VR technologies are heavily tied to Head-Mounted Displays as they are used as the primary means of interaction between the user and the virtual environment. Strapping the Head-Mounted Display on, the users are ready to immerse themselves into new VR experiences. After using VR for a while though, one might start noticing that something is missing from the experience.

Personally, I interact with VR a lot in my university grounds and it always feels kind of a let down when, as a user, I feel that I am confined within a small space when using VR. For example, try playing a VR implementation of a game and start walking while playing. Eventually either the cables of the Head-Mounted Display will disconnect from the computer ruining your experience or you will probably bump into a wall. In other VR game experiences the user might not even move at all and simply use a teleport function! The VR experience tries to simulate how we interact with our physical environment into a virtual one. In other words, the locomotive motions that we use in our everyday lives are not always implemented, or when implemented we bump into walls.

Thankfully, with the rise of popularity of VR experiences this problem has started to be countered by the use of........VR treadmills!

A showcase of a user using a VR treadmill, picture is courtesy of Tom's Hardware.

In this blog post, we will focus on explaining what VR treadmill's are and especially the case of Virtuix Omni gaming treadmill!

Without further ado, VR Treadmills are a new technology that is also slowly introduced to the public in order to further enhance the VR experience along with VR headsets. Currently, they are not as accessible as our pre-mentioned VR headsets but we are slowly introduced to them through Kickstarter campaigns and video game expo's!

By using a VR treadmill, as I will explain further down below, the user has the ability to walk in place and correspond their walking motions to the VR game by walking on the treadmill. It is kind of a game breaking experience when you are playing a VR game and not being able to properly move in the VR world, is it not? This why we  VR treadmills are becoming popular now basically! Our motion on the treadmill corresponds to our motions in the Virtual Reality environment enhancing our VR experience by adding believability. For example, if we had a hyper-realistic VR game where we pressed a button on a controller to walk forward instead of actually walking in the game world using our own motions could prove detrimental to our perception of the experience. 

Let us look now more into the Virtuix Omni Gaming Treadmill project to further explain the VR treadmill trend and how it functions.

Image of the Virtuix Omni Gaming Treadmill, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Virtuix Omni is a device that promised full-on, multidirectional immersion in our favourite games by combining a custom treadmill and the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset. The kickstarter campaign of Virtuix Omni depicted users playing popular games Team Fortress 2 and Skyrim as if they were really in the game world, needless to say that gamers unanimously expressed their desire for the product.

Virtuix, more specifically, had a Kickstarter campaign that surpassed its initial funding goal of a 150,000 dollars by a large margin of a total 1,109,351 dollars! 

Image print screen from the Kickstarter campaign

What and how is the interaction between the VR treadmill and the user happening?

The Virtuix Omni, in contrast to most of the VR treadmills out there, has no motor or moving parts. It is a plastic dome that the users can walk on while being tied by a belt in order not to fall. The area that the users are allowed to walk on is made from plastic with ridges and grooves dispersed throughout the surface of the treadmill. 

Notice how the texture surface of the treadmill is to observe the ridges and grooves of the treadmill. Image courtesy of Geeky world.

At the same time, the users then wear a custom-made pair of shoes that have  plunger pins underneath the sole of the shoe in order to help the users maintain their stability on the treadmill. In addition, under the sole again, there are sensors that calculate how fast your walking speed is so that your avatar inside the game adapts the same walking speed.

Picture above, how the shoe looks underneath, image courtesy of SLASHGEAR.

Picture above, a side picture of the shoes used by Virtuix Omni. Image courtesy of Virtuix.

In the newer versions of Virtuix Omni, the shoes now instead of pins have a low-friction sole that enhances movement on the Omni platform and makes it more comfortable.

In addition, the entire platform of Virtuix Omni can be dismantled, folded up, and tucked away like a traditional exercise equipment. In other words, the users can take it apart and reconstruct it in order to save space if they choose to.

Moreover, the Virtuix Omni also uses integrated hardware and software that works as a traditional controller that measures when and what the users are doing within the device. Then, that information is being used as input into the game world like a traditional controller does.

To summarise, the interaction that Virtuix Omni offers to the users refers to how the system succeeds in adapting the sensation of physical walking to the VR game and occurs by utilising our locomotive body movements into the game world. This translation of the users footsteps into possible offered directions that the users can achieve is the essence of the interaction itself. In other words, the users after stepping on the treadmill can walk forward, left, right, and backwards and these movement directions are recognised as input for the system. In addition, the users can run up to a certain speed as well as lean, movements that in games so far could only be implemented by using input from a keyboard (by pressing W,A,S,D) or using the analog sticks of a gamepad. It should be mentioned that running on the Virtuix Omni treadmill in particular does not feel like exactly like natural running, users refer to running as more of a continuous sliding motion on a wooden floor. In other words, the feet of the users rarely leave the ground.

Price and Criticism 

Due to its popularity, it is widely available and open nowadays for the public to purchase. It is important to mention that when the kickstarted campaign began in 2013, the Virtuix Omni costed only 500 dollars. Moreover, by buying a relatively cheap VR treadmill such as Virtuix Omni and with the use of a VR headset and a computer we can have our own enhanced VR experiences right in our living room for under three thousand dollars (A VR-Headset and a relatively good computer can be relatively pricey but still!).

There are some issues although that remain unanswered to someone that has never used a VR treadmill before though. What happens if in the game world the character has to crouch? The Virtuix belt holds the user tightly into place in order to provide security in case of accidents and does not allow these kind of crouching motions. In turns out that the Virtuix Omni does not support the function of crouch all-together, ouch...

What about the special shoes that are required to use the treadmill? As a business idea, having many pairs of shoes for your users that use the Virtuix Omni can create issues. Some of the shoes on the website of the Virtuix Omni, for example cost 99 dollars. This can be a deal-breaker for many users as the idea of having to spend an additional amount of money to acquire the VR treadmill can prove to be disheartening. Also, according to the website there are 12 different sizes that the users can choose from and if users would like to buy two pairs they would have to pay at least 200 dollars, this is quite the amount of money.

The omni shoes, image courtesy of Virtuix.

Overall, despite issues that can come up with the use technologies of VR treadmills, they can be a great way to enhance the experience of the user by allowing motion in different directions on demand. Never before did we have the option to combine the VR environment with our locomotion functions as today and VR treadmills are a large step in the right direction, even though sometimes minor issues can arise. Still, the VR treadmill technologies are at their very beginning. We still have a long way to go until the perfect VR treadmill is introduced to the public at a fairly economical price while offering the best out of the VR experience. 

Lastly, the following link to Youtube presents a video depicting the usage of the treadmill in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibg6JBeyh54

Let us keep an open mind towards new technologies and experiences that are introduced nowadays and see what the future of VR holds! 

Until next time folks! :-)