VR locomotion

[binarymushroom]

I've just been thinking about this for a bit now.

seems like a giant multi directional treadmill is what some big companies are doing right now, but it seems very .... not good for living room use, in fact most people play games on a chair or a couch.

really all somone needs to move around is a tumbstick. not even really that. just an 8 way d-pad with pressure sensitive buttons.

why not just make those buttons really heavy duty and attach them to your foot?

make the controller attach to the foot similar to a snowboard binding, the foot is raised off the ground maybe 1 or 2  inches and surrounded by a lift kinda like a platform shoe  the pressure sensitive buttons are on the bottom edge of the lift and face twords the ground...

1.  putting pressure twords the toe end moves forward

2. putting pressure on the heal moves back

3 putting pressure twords the outsides moves left

4 putting pressure twords the outside moves right

5 combo of these moves in diagonals

6 pushing down on your foot harder makes you run

 

now you don't have to stand up or use some weird in game teleporting systems.  it would be super easy to get used to something like this and would make these games more viable to move around in and really low cost to develop.

 

[binarymushroom]

wasnt sure how to edit. 

join it with head tracking so if you have the foot in position 1. moving forward and you look left then the head leads you and moves you left. kinda like moving with wsad and a mouse or a dual joy stick movement.

the reason this method will work is that the body already knows that the feet move you. and every one knows that the head leads you in the direction you want to move.

there is a small learning curve but it wont cause as much motion sickness as long as the speed can be adjusted with a slider for different people

[binarymushroom]

another edit.

moving backwards the head tracing functions need to be disabled or serverly slowed down. because as well all know you dont swing your head about when making  a lot of backwards motion. so moving backwards is more linear.

 

certain slowdowns of the head set tracking need to take place when strafing the foot left and right so that wild disorienting swings don't happen as well.

i truly and whole hardheadedly think that this style of controlling vr can become the de facto go to... think about how we went from 1 to 2 thumsticks. it was unheard of untill 20 years ago when playstaion showed us how it was done.  now do it again.. but with VR

[binarymushroom]

sorry one more.

we are gonna need a spacial sensor on the foot so that the game can always know where the foot is so that forward is always forward regardless of how you have been rotating or moving about. not an issue if you are on the couch but an issue when you are standing up

 

there needs to be a calibration function as well because some people are duck foot people or pigion toed people, so forward needs to be adjusted relative. other than that all the info should be inplace

Edited December 11, 2019 by binarymushroom

[binarymushroom]

so how do you account for the foot moving and you dont want the buttons to be pressed?

 

there is a main pressure button on the top of the controller inbetween the foot and the controller.  it is pressure sensitive. so when you lift your foot or reduce the wight it kills the button actions on the bottom of the controller. this way you dont have wild movements that cause nausea.

[binarymushroom]

the contoller in question would look similar in style to the bottom of this shoe:

 

 

external-content.duckduckgo.com.jfif

[binarymushroom]

baiscly  the controller is just the bottom of a shoe with a bunch of joystick hardware attached to the bottom of it. 

every button or pressure zone is analogue for varying pressure sensitivity  the back is rounded up like in the picture in the previous post so that you cannot press forward and back at the same time.   

the buttons never actually hit the ground as there is a nice thin, water resistant  rubber coating on the bottom.  similar to how old controllers used to have the rubber gaskets under the d pads  but this time its on the outside.

[binarymushroom]

now if you have read this far you have been moving your foot around trying to get the grasp of it.

and you would have noticed that it is harder to put pressure on the inside of your foot.  we can fix that by putting the button for right closer to the top of the foot.

 

so the buttons form a cross shape... just like a holy christian cross. with 3 buttons twords the toe of the controller and 1 at the heel for backwards movement.

 

dont forget the spacial sensor

Edited December 11, 2019 by binarymushroom

[binarymushroom]

how to jump?

assign it to a controller button easy

or we can do something diffrent

we can roll the controller from back to front IE  heel to toe and lift up. now we jump. 

[binarymushroom]

jumping is a work in progress. and we need an actual controler to figure out the movents of it. most of it requires releasing forward motion while lifting but the motion sensor is a problem. its better to use an assigned hand controller button untill someone here puts all this into place.