Omni-Directional Treadmill Could Add Realistic Movement to Virtual Reality

A company called Virtual Space Devices, Inc. has been developing an omni-directional treadmill for the past 10 years in conjunction with the U.S. Army. It is essentially a flat surface that allows a person to walk or run in any direction without physically changing positions. The company plans to integrate it with a total immersion headset to construct a virtual world for a person to move about freely within. Just the video above looks impressive. The man demonstrating the device rarely has to break pace to let it catch up with him. If the technology continues like this, we could have the option of playing an MMO by physically walking around the landscape. That might dissolve the stereotype of the overweight, lazy gamer. Hopefully you won’t need the safety harness every time you use it though. Or the whistling.

Via Virtual Space Devices