Gadgetory

I'm Paul Miller with the verge I here with yen who built the Omni which is the Omni is the first virtual reality interface to move freely and naturally in your favorite game so you walk around in here and you move in your game that's right Johnny puts your brain on your body in the game so you can walk on the platform in 360 degrees you can run jump Crouch and you're in the game so I've seen your Kickstarter you guys got funded right oh yeah we got funded in three and a half hours I think people kind of want this and I want this I want to try this so just I'm gonna put on the shoes all right yeah so these are like friction lofric G's are low friction shoes with a bit more friction on the toe so our objective is to mimic a natural gait so that I feel like you're walking naturally and the key to that is to have a specific sole configuration that just allows you to walk naturally and freely here in the virtual world it's like bowling yes yeah it has a special soul as well that's that's right and how did you what what what led you to decide that slipping and sliding on a on a surface was going to be the way to do this you know the only is a result of two years of experimenting and researching and throughout our research I started realizing that the best way to make a device like this in an affordable way it should make a passive device or no motorized parts no moving parts I keep it as simple as possible to keep it cost down it's pretty free so now what is this this is a support belt and I'll give it to you once you're in here we'll get to that later and it's just a prototype so we're gonna what I want to do now is guide you through because this is your first time you never done it before so - just be careful sighs a lot of disk wavers hold on with your both hands it's gonna be slippery let me close this for now oh yeah dude and so what I want to do this is be great for dancing is to that could be if it can close this so what what I want you to do first is hold on with both hands and we're going to start with small steps okay so when I hold on and just take a small step forward and put your lean forward a little bit and put your weight on your forward foot just like you're walking natural light yeah that's it that's that you got it so while I'm walking how is this tracking my moon so right now we're using the Kinect to track your walking movement the connector extracts your feet in the final version that will be released to our backers will have an integrated tracking solution we don't want people to have to buy a Kinect even though Google support Kinect so to accommodate an integrated solution so give it a couple more seconds actually are you doing great it's like a treadmill there we go the next step is to give you the support bones second of all Abbadon it's going to be too high yeah one one disadvantage of this prototype is that you know we put the ring and kind of my sides it's nicer to use it would have to ring Razer the ring a little bit alright our next step is to put you in the game all right so this is we're working with half-life 2 right now yeah we'll make it work with half-life 2 let's put this on hold on one second I'm going to activate the Kinect but I need to get out of the frame for that here's a gun let me give you the gun now just girlfriends I am half-life right now talking that I feel like I'm gone from the world yeah welcome back okay but you think last thing I remember I was chilly yeah good this is all a dream maybe it was well some camera so it's pretty real what do you think yeah when I when I got it I got it yeah no I really felt like I was I was doing it it's definitely working some muscles that I'm not used to so maybe that's me stepping wrong well I gotta say you you went all in right away without any getting used to tell you them so it takes some time to get used to the Omni it takes about five to ten minutes okay so when you're doing it without the ribs you're doing great then you put the rift on right away you get disoriented you start sliding right you forget you forget whatever you learned in the two minute training we did I think maybe it's because like what I'm looking around I want babies should be you know yeah commiserate English is not my first language what I feet to be where I think compared to my or my head is so I kept on like I go I'm like slash I didn't know that because my I felt like I was upright in the game I was looking up for something yeah so see even of you you walk again without Oriya so you know you're doing it great again see that that's what it is you're walking nationally it looks natural yeah the difficulties is is shipping one of these to my apartment and then I can find that place for it in my apartment it convinced you my roommate that this is a really good connection connecting your roommate should be easy I would hope oh well I gotta give her this it's gonna work out I thank you good it's the Omni you