Do you remember Virtuix Omni? I’ll never forget trying out an early version of a VR treadmill in a hotel suite several E3s ago. The system, which features a concave platform and slippery shoes, was smart enough to influence Ready Player One’s movements in space. The electronics-free system finally started shipping earlier this year.
One thing you can say about virtual reality is that it inspires a lot of creative solutions to different issues around technology. Movement is a big one, of course. You lose some of that visceral feeling when your FPV avatar walks around while you’re sitting there on the couch.
But for the foreseeable future, all solutions will have some major drawbacks. The price is the same as in the case of the Omni, and is likely for the lion’s share of these types of peripherals. Other issues are size (it’s huge) and sound (it’s very noisy).
The HoloTile — which recently debuted on YouTube at the end of a video honoring Disney Research Fellow, Lanny Smoot — is a very clever and very elegant solution to some of these problems.
The system consists of hundreds of small, round “tiles” that appear to be the size of a silver dollar. Each acts as a sort of mini omnidirectional treadmill. Working together, their only job is to prevent walkers from leaving the pad.
“I can walk on this multi-directional floor in any direction I want,” Smoot says in the video. “It will automatically do whatever it takes to keep me on the ground. The amazing thing about this is that multiple people can be on it and they all walk independently. They can walk in virtual reality, and many other things.”
Being able to support so many people is probably the most impressive part of all of this. Naturally, there are a lot of questions, including the maximum speed (Smoot moves very intentionally in the video) and how much weight they can exercise. The big caveat to all of this is that HoloTile appears to be largely a research project at the moment.
One also assumes that such a system in its current form would be too expensive to use at home. If it were to see the light of day, it would likely be part of the Disney Parks VR experience.