🚶♀️ 🚶♂️ Walking around the metaverse 🚶♂️ 🚶♀️
If you’ve spent any considerable amount of time in Decentraland, the Sandbox, Roblox, Horizon Worlds or any of virtual space you’ll have experienced the many different ways that the ability to wander round is simulated.
Some virtual worlds allow you to click and point in order to zap your avatar from one part of the space to another, and some enable you to hold down an arrow button or toggle on the controller to step by step explore the space.
In all instances though, your legs remain either dangling off the chair you’re sitting on or rooted to the spot if you’re plugged into VR.
(Although, I recently downloaded Asgard’s Wrath on the Oculus Quest 3 and initially found myself bumping into furniture as I got used to the ability to see my avatar walk and run to explore such an expansive space and try _not_ to move my legs in tandem! It took a fair bit of getting used to, in order to only walk in the virtual space and not real life too.)
However, in all virtual world explorings to date, that’s the concept — your avatar moves round but you stay where you are — instead activating the movement through your hands and whatever way you’re controlling your virtual representation 🎮 🕹 . This is very much mirroring our experience with computer games.
This is set to change in the metaverse and there’s already technologies which are aiming to put our legs to work for our digital wanderings.
One company with an offering that’s been the go-to example of movement in virtual worlds is Virtuix’s Omni One, a 360 degree treadmill that can even capture jumping and kneeling actions. Its got a hefty price tag of $2,595 + shipping, and is currently only available to their investor community, plus at a 4ft diameter, it’s a hefty piece of kit to add to a gaming set up.
Another recent entry into the metaverse exploring tech space is Disney with their HoloTile invention. The tech was teased in a Disney Research video and showcases someone walking on the tiled floor, with the individual tiles each responding to the person’s movement to keep them in the centre of the space. I’ve watched the video several times and I’m still baffled at the underlying mechanics of it! What’s even more impressive though is that you can have multiple people on the floor, each walking in different directions, and the HoloTile’s respond to their individual movements! This is a much more compact solution than the Omni One and the multi-player aspect is super cool, so I’m excited to see how Disney develop and bring this to market.
Take a look here: https://lnkd.in/e7MJgCTr (HoloTile part starts from c3mins in)
