Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by the Corsair Vengeance k70 and k95 these fully mechanical keyboards are designed for performance gaming visit Corsair comm slash Vengeance gaming to learn more guys welcome to our product overview of the omni by virtue X so this is the world's first virtual reality set up right now the only way that you can actually use something like an oculus standing up and not only that but it enables movement while you are in games in a way that's just never been done before so I'm going to walk you through what you actually need to get this going step one is you're going to need some kind of motion tracking device right now this is an Xbox 360 Kinect but as you can imagine there are other solutions that could enable a world of other possibilities such as well the new Xbox one Kinect which is going to be higher definition just generally better in every possible way or even things like accelerometers built into the device itself the future no one knows but you know wink wink also you are going to need yourself a computer sorry console gamers you guys are going to have to man up and actually invest in a gaming computer at this point because let's just face it when it comes to new ways of interacting with our games PC is still number one now we're here doing a product demo but I actually haven't gotten a chance to try it yet so I am taking yawns word for it at this point but we are going to be trying it and blogging about it before we leave this hotel suite so yawn is modeling for us his brainchild the Omni so it starts with you need some kind of virtual reality device in this case this is an oculus development kit that he is wearing so you can see it's attached by a wire to the PC the oculus is unique in that it uses a single screen and then an optical splitter in order to bring images to each eye right now the dev kits aren't very high res which makes it a little bit less immersive but by the time the oculus rift hits us we're going to be talking about a completely different gaming experience now here's the challenge this is the problem that you'll unsolved here is that you can't use an oculus standing up because what happens is your body it Orient's itself according to what you see so if you're looking around in a game world you will fall over trying to use an oculus without this device so let's work our way down so next we're going to find this is relatively unimportant right now but could be different in the future this is just an off-the-shelf plastic gun you being used as a trigger this is an Xbox controller and right now it is completely unacceptable and totally just you know whatever you could be easily holding like you know a marshmallow that had a button in it and that would work just as well but in the future we could be talking about separate tracking for the camera and the gun in fact there's a demo that valves got working right now in collaboration with virtuix where you can even do things like run down a path down a corridor shooting behind you with your gun because the tracking is completely separate but right now this demo that we're looking at today doesn't have that alright next up what we've got is the support device so this is where the Omni really comes into it so now as you can see this one right here is made out of basically hand welded steel as well as a couple of sort of also handcrafted low friction pads so there's two here and yon effect you just get you to rotate a little bit for the audience and right here so these interface with a low friction ring around the support device here and then it's all held on with a supportive belt now what this does is it keeps you from falling and it also keeps you from being uncomfortable or feeling strange while you stand in the device there's two more pieces here down below that make it so that when you lean forward you don't have you don't have any kind of a weird pressure on you now these are all totally prototypes and the finished design will be completely different I mean it'll still support you it won't be different in that it's like a hen and lays eggs it'll be different in that it's shaped differently so let's move on to the actual omni itself this supportive ring right now is made of wood you know the old I well it's the prototype is it made from wood screws then the answer is yes and the finished one will actually use a steel endoskeleton inside the entire thing and be made of molded plastic so it will be much less heavy and it will also be a more sleek looking but this ring right here is what keeps you from falling is also what supports your belt as you move forward because the Omni actually allows you to not only use virtual reality standing up but also walk-in games or even run in games which we've had demoed for us already you can even alter your movement speed this is going to change the way that you interface with games so the old way was the the only way to keep a crosshair on someone was to strafe around the league no one actually moves like that this is going to change the immersion because all of a sudden you'll be able to look around a corner boom boom boom look back and you won't have to rely on weird cheap tricks like you know QuickTime events to actually move around and do the things that you need to do so these arms are going to be changed right now again they're made of wood and this height adjustment thing right here so for those of you who don't happen to be exactly the same height as Yann you know he didn't invent the thing just for himself you'll be able to change this around but it'll be more like exercise equipment where a pin drops out and you can adjust the height depending on what you need to do the platform down here is where things start to get really really interesting because a lot of design went into the curvature here the materials being used so this is the same low friction material that we saw up at the top of the device and then the shoes are really where some of the magic starts to happen so I'm going to get Yan to turn around for us so you can see there's a gentle curve to the omni itself and then there is a specially designed shoe that right now looks like a handmade moccasin don't worry the real one will be different that uses three contact points with a low friction material here and a higher friction toe so Yan can you show us how you walk on the Omni and I'm just going to walk them through the mechanics of it here so you can see right here you want low friction when you're on the curved surface but what would happen if you had a high friction toe on the shoe show us what would happen Yan if you had high friction toes on the shoe that's right your feet would slip out from under you so this is how okay sorry oh he's running now you can't see we're not pointing at you anymore but this is how it keeps the feeling of walking from feeling maybe not quite like walking on even ground but maybe more like a treadmill now speaking of treadmills the application of this given that the price point is projected to be somewhere in the I've seen 400 to 600 although this guy's given me the neither will confirm nor deny answer thanks a lot for that so depending on what pricing looks like we could be looking at something that is a viable alternative for exercise gear for gamers where not only do you get a more immersive gaming experience but because of the way that the software works so there's special software that is interpreting this as game movements and as game actions because of the way that it works we could be looking at a situation where you can play games and get exercise and not have the games be just an exercise in sort of wiggling a stick around or be limited to things like you know follow along with the dancer type Kinect games we could be talking hardcore games that you can also get a workout while doing you can clearly see that yawn is a very fit individual himself and I'm not sure how comfortably felt modeling this for us but either way I hope you guys have enjoyed this showcase of the Omni by virtue X don't forget to subscribe - tech tips from our unboxings reviews and other computer videos