bruno

Bruno Dias

@bruno

"mr storylets"

writer (derogatory). lead designer on Fallen London.

http://twitter.com/notbrunoagain

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bruno
@bruno

here's my prediction about Disney's 360 degree treadmill: it can't work for VR because what it's doing is constantly pulling you towards the center of the treadmill as you walk. Meaning that every time you move forward and then stop, you get jerked backwards. If you're wearing a VR headset creating the illusion of actually moving forwards, the mismatch between your inner ear signal and your visual signal would be intensely nauseating.

Maybe if they made a really big one, like the size of a whole room, so that the motion of being pulled back towards the center is very slow and imperceptible most of the time? And then you can level design around the limitation so that users aren't walking too fast outside the physical bounds of the space?

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in reply to @bruno's post:

Foxtrot68
@Foxtrot68

feels like the human ear is always the biggest enemy for any and all VR movement threadmill solutions. the disney one seemed intriguing if they can solve the problem of it also being incredibly loud due to the mechanical nature of it

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mathsbian
@mathsbian

If they somehow made it so the treadmill only moved when you pushed back with your feet (thus, stopping when you stop) maybe it would work? Because I think in that case you would just stay in the middle? But I also literally just woke up and my brain likes coming up with solutions so like. This immediate, fatigue-filled idea should be taken with a grain of salt my understanding of physics may not have switched on yet

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asg
@asg

Yeah unfortunately it can't quite work that way: Stand in the middle. Lift one foot. Place it down 18 inches away. Transfer your weight. You are now away from the center of the treadmill.

In theory, it should have moved your feet backwards as you transferred your weight, so that your center of mass remained in the exact same place. But even that would still mess with your inner ear, which expects your head to accelerate and the decelerate but it just remained in place.

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mathsbian
@mathsbian

Ah I see. Our inner ear is so useful until it isn’t, and it’s not like the appendix where we can just take it out if needs must. When it’s dysfunctional you get all kinds of weird symptoms, I can’t imagine how bad it would be trying to live without one

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binary
@binary

Yeah I think you're right, the only way this makes sense is if it's REALLY big. There are so many issues with this in a small space (especially if anyone starts like, walking briskly and turning suddenly, feel like that's going to be a tripping hazard real quick if it has to suddenly compensate)

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vectorpoem
@vectorpoem

all this work just for a workable simulacrum of... walking on completely flat ground? if i see a hill in VR and decide to walk up it i don't get any sense of grade? stairs are right out i guess. so much of this stuff is solving the easiest 10% of the problem as cleverly as possible.

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