Since even before the modern VR headsets became available in March of 2016 (when all we had was the prototype Oculus Rift development kits), but especially since Valve and HTC started advertising their version of the headset as pretty much "room-scale" only (with most of the advertisement and promotional material never even showing sit-down gameplay, not even briefly in passing), giving many people the impression that VR is limited to a standing-up experience, people have been envisioning and predicting "omnidirectional treadmills" as a form of control.
A normal treadmill only allows movement in one direction, but special treadmill technology can allow the surface to move in two directions at the same time, allowing for a person to walk on the treadmill facing any direction. A true 360-degree treadmill. (It's hard to imagine how this could work in practice, but quite clever solutions have been developed to allow this.)
Normal "room-scale" gameplay limits greatly how far you can walk around. Even in a relatively big room (which most people don't have), the maximum distance you could ever walk is but just a few meters. Normal setups at people's homes will usually restrict it even more.
Thus people envision an omnidirectional treadmill as a solution to this. It will literally allow a person to walk in place, towards any direction, without limit. The VR game can then simulate this movement accurately. The practical limits of "room-scale" would be pretty much completely removed, allowing the user to walk even kilometers in one direction at will.
To this day some people (some even quite prominent YouTubers) are still hyping this technology, as if it were the next revolution in gaming.
However, there are several reasons why these special treadmills will most probably never become but an extremely small niche market, even among owners of VR headsets (assuming such a thing is ever even developed into an actual commercial product available to the masses).
There is, of course the price. No matter how much the technology is developed, I can't imagine such a treadmill, even a very bare-bones one, being exactly cheap. If you think that an RTX 2080 Ti card was expensive at launch, at a price of something like $1300, you could probably multiply that at least by 10 and you might be approaching the prices of these future (possible) treadmills. Nobody in their right mind would buy one, except for a few very rich people for whom that money is just pocket change. Expect adoption rates of less than 0.1% among all VR headset owners (not to talk about all gamers).
And, of course, with abysmal adoption rates there will be abysmal support in games (especially triple-A titles). This will be orders of magnitude worse than with the VR headsets themselves.
But let's put the commercial concerns aside, and think about the treadmill itself, as a form of game controller. Does it work as a gameplay mechanic?
Think about how long you would go to a walk outside, both in terms of distance and time. Sure, there are some people who will go walking just the fun of it, for several hours, and even 10-20 kilometers. But those are a quite rare exception. (And, ironically, those people usually don't tend to be at home playing video games all day long.) Most people would perhaps walk a kilometer or two at most for the fun of it.
Also consider how slow walking is. Just imagine how long it takes you to walk from one end to the other of a football field (100 meters). Now consider how fast the same distance is typically traveled in your average first-person shooter.
There's a good reason why in the vast majority of first-person shooters the playable character always moves at (or almost at) superhuman speeds: Because it would be really boring to travel realistic distances at a realistic walking or even running speed.
Now imagine you being forced to travel great distances, those typical in first-person shooters, at an actual realistic walking speed. It could take you literally an hour to traverse a distance that in a typical game takes like 10 minutes.
And that's not to talk about the physical strain. Most people don't walk kilometers on end, and would get tired very quickly. Avid gamers aren't usually really fit, but even those who are would still get tired of walking around for hours on end. This is the same problem as with "room-scale" VR itself, but worse, because you would actually be walking almost all the time. How many hours would you be capable of playing like that?
A VR headset itself is a cool way to get an immersive gaming experience, which can often enhance greatly the game itself. An omnidirectional treadmill is not. It's a complete gimmick that may keep people amused for 10 minutes, and that's it. And the lack of adoption and triple-A titles (and probably almost any titles at all) would just kill it in its tracks even if a commercial version is ever developed.
A normal treadmill only allows movement in one direction, but special treadmill technology can allow the surface to move in two directions at the same time, allowing for a person to walk on the treadmill facing any direction. A true 360-degree treadmill. (It's hard to imagine how this could work in practice, but quite clever solutions have been developed to allow this.)
Normal "room-scale" gameplay limits greatly how far you can walk around. Even in a relatively big room (which most people don't have), the maximum distance you could ever walk is but just a few meters. Normal setups at people's homes will usually restrict it even more.
Thus people envision an omnidirectional treadmill as a solution to this. It will literally allow a person to walk in place, towards any direction, without limit. The VR game can then simulate this movement accurately. The practical limits of "room-scale" would be pretty much completely removed, allowing the user to walk even kilometers in one direction at will.
To this day some people (some even quite prominent YouTubers) are still hyping this technology, as if it were the next revolution in gaming.
However, there are several reasons why these special treadmills will most probably never become but an extremely small niche market, even among owners of VR headsets (assuming such a thing is ever even developed into an actual commercial product available to the masses).
There is, of course the price. No matter how much the technology is developed, I can't imagine such a treadmill, even a very bare-bones one, being exactly cheap. If you think that an RTX 2080 Ti card was expensive at launch, at a price of something like $1300, you could probably multiply that at least by 10 and you might be approaching the prices of these future (possible) treadmills. Nobody in their right mind would buy one, except for a few very rich people for whom that money is just pocket change. Expect adoption rates of less than 0.1% among all VR headset owners (not to talk about all gamers).
And, of course, with abysmal adoption rates there will be abysmal support in games (especially triple-A titles). This will be orders of magnitude worse than with the VR headsets themselves.
But let's put the commercial concerns aside, and think about the treadmill itself, as a form of game controller. Does it work as a gameplay mechanic?
Think about how long you would go to a walk outside, both in terms of distance and time. Sure, there are some people who will go walking just the fun of it, for several hours, and even 10-20 kilometers. But those are a quite rare exception. (And, ironically, those people usually don't tend to be at home playing video games all day long.) Most people would perhaps walk a kilometer or two at most for the fun of it.
Also consider how slow walking is. Just imagine how long it takes you to walk from one end to the other of a football field (100 meters). Now consider how fast the same distance is typically traveled in your average first-person shooter.
There's a good reason why in the vast majority of first-person shooters the playable character always moves at (or almost at) superhuman speeds: Because it would be really boring to travel realistic distances at a realistic walking or even running speed.
Now imagine you being forced to travel great distances, those typical in first-person shooters, at an actual realistic walking speed. It could take you literally an hour to traverse a distance that in a typical game takes like 10 minutes.
And that's not to talk about the physical strain. Most people don't walk kilometers on end, and would get tired very quickly. Avid gamers aren't usually really fit, but even those who are would still get tired of walking around for hours on end. This is the same problem as with "room-scale" VR itself, but worse, because you would actually be walking almost all the time. How many hours would you be capable of playing like that?
A VR headset itself is a cool way to get an immersive gaming experience, which can often enhance greatly the game itself. An omnidirectional treadmill is not. It's a complete gimmick that may keep people amused for 10 minutes, and that's it. And the lack of adoption and triple-A titles (and probably almost any titles at all) would just kill it in its tracks even if a commercial version is ever developed.
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