[djhope99]

John Carmack pointed out on X that there is a fatal flaw in this design:

“I am skeptical of something like this making an impact for consumer VR, but it should be possible to integrate the sensor input at the OpenXR level, allowing it to work with all apps without needing per-app specialization.

However, it probably doesn’t “solve” motion sickness, because the vestibular system still won’t think you are going forward. The bouncing around motion of walking does have a masking effect that will help some.“

I personally could not get over the awful bout of motion sickness after I played my first “walking around” game on VR.

[xg15]

I think it depends how it's supposed to be used. If you try to use it like a treadmill in a tiny room then no - and I'm sceptical it would work at all, because the motors would probably be overpowered by any kind of decent sprint or jump.

However I could imagine this to be able to expand the abilities of venues that already have enough space to let you walk around: You could have people move on their own as long as there is space, but then "stealthily" move them around when they think they're standing still, allowing either much larger geometries than would even fit in a hall or let you play around with non-euclidean geometries, etc.

But yeah, in general I agree, I don't see how this will enable some kind of VR breakthrough or even just move us in the direction on one: Even with this tech working perfectly, you'd be restricted to scenarios where you walk on flat ground and never touch anything. Even a basic hike in the woods has more complex interactions than that, not even starting with the kind of over-the-top acrobatics that we're used to from non-VR videogames.

So yeah, you could probably do the Stanley Parable in VR with this (without the staircases and the drops), but I don't see much else.

[Nevermark]

> you'd be restricted to scenarios where you walk on flat ground

I don’t think it’s either surprising or discouraging that flat walking surfaces get worked out before dynamic surfaces.

It might take a while, but it is inevitable.

A rolling wave, with a grippy active surface, could keep you centered while you perceived an upward slope. Seeing and feeling a vista of uneven slopes in VR would be fantastic. I would love Skyrim as a health app!

Also, simple tilting could provide the force feedback of changing speeds.

[thfuran]

I wonder how quickly you can spin someone while they're walking without it being perceptible. If you have a large area, you could use sneaky rotation to constrain movement while minimizing the amount of sliding people around you have to do. Though I'm not actually sure that'd be less noticeable at practical sizes.

[mlyle]

Calling this a fatal flaw is silly.

It may not fix everything with movement wearing a HMD, but one can imagine a whole lot of use cases without HMDs, and it might improve a lot of HMD use cases.

[djhope99]

Sure but I think that Disney is likely to be presenting this as a potential consumer use case and if it can’t make traction there it seems pretty fatal if they can’t find a way to make money from it.

We see a lot of POCs like this that never make it anywhere.

[hibikir]

I think it's far more likely that this will be used in the parks division: Selling to consumers involves far more variables than creating a VR enhanced ride. Only if it's successful as a ride, with time to get the problems figured out and the prices low enough, they will consider retail.

[djhope99]

As it stands though VR motion sickness is an even bigger problem for a park ride, sometimes you can get used to the sickness but if you’re doing it for a one off ride.

[easton]

The video mentioned stage shows as an application, which makes total sense. It’s like the turning platform from Hamilton x1000.

[judge2020]

Motion sickness in VR is not universal. Many do just fine playing unoptimized, stuttering games/apps at 50fps including when using smooth locomotion.

[kranke155]

It’s a problem most people experience, having worked in VR for years, I am still very sensitive.

[coffeebeqn]

I thought I didn’t have a problem until I played a action-y game for over an hour in one go and felt very nauseous after

[bilsbie]

Even if it didn’t solve motion sickness, I think it would dramatically help with immersion for me.

Artificial movement brings me out of it more than anything.

[IshKebab]

If you make one of these big enough then you wouldn't notice the motion. That would of course be crazy expensive. Cool though.

[bilsbie]

I don’t know why he’s saying that. Treadmills solve motion, why wouldn’t this?

[djhope99]

Have you tried a treadmill with a VR headset on? It’s not the movement that’s the problem it’s combining it with a VR headset.

[yreg]

I have tried it and I don't know what are you talking about. VR + treadmill is better than VR + stepping in place. And VR + stepping in place is better than VR + moving with a joystick.

The fact that this invention perhaps doesn't solve the immersion/sickness problem perfectly doesn't mean it is fatally flawed.