Stepping onto the Disney VR floor, you can really "walk" into the metaverse.

Source: Metaverse Daily Explosion

The AR/VR industry has been developing for more than 10 years, but related software and hardware have still not become mass products. This technology that combines virtuality and reality is also regarded as a gateway to the Metaverse. entrance.

Now it seems that the entrance is still far away from humans, but there are many "door touchers". Various headsets such as Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest3  are one of the ways. Recently, Disney exposed another An immersive experience.

This time it is not a head-mounted display, but a VR floor "Holotile Floor" . Disney positions it as "the world's first multi-person, omnidirectional, modular, and scalable virtual reality treadmill floor" - users can step on it and stay put in the real world, but in the virtual world they can move at will. Effect.

If Vision Pro brings people’s visual space experience in the virtual reality world, then Holotile extends the somatosensory space. ‍‍‍‍

01 Stand in place and "walk" into virtual reality

Holotile Floor is as its name suggests. It looks like an irregular floor. It is composed of hundreds of small round tiles the size of silver dollars. They tilt and rotate in real time, adjusting according to the pressure and direction of the user's footsteps to keep them in the center of the entire floor. When using it, the user is standing still in reality, but in the virtual reality world, he may have walked 2 kilometers.

It sounds like this has the same effect as a treadmill. In conjunction with the usage scenario of VR head-mounted displays, it solves a problem-when users wear the head-mounted display to explore the virtual environment, they can focus on it. No more worrying about bumping into items from the physical world. Although today's headsets have realized the mutual switching between virtual and reality, Holotile Floor can make people feel more psychologically confident that "there is enough space".

Similar VR walking devices have long existed. If you have watched the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem", the "V Equipment" used by players of the "Three-Body Game" to enter that world is this type of equipment.

It is not a prop created in science fiction film and television works, but a real product that actually exists. The base part of the V-suit in the play is the VR treadmill Walk mini provided by the Chinese manufacturer KAT VR, and the head-mounted display device is from Pimax8KX from Xiaopai Technology.

According to "Chengshi Interactive" report, the chief director Yang Lei was said to be shocked by the realistic experience during the personal test, and believed that this set of equipment can best demonstrate the synchronization performance of the V equipment in the three-body system.

The functions provided by Walk mini and Holotile are to allow people to achieve the feeling of real walking in a virtual scene. From the perspective of device form, the Walk mini with a chassis requires support from devices similar to backrests and seat belts. And protect the player from falling out of the base. Holotile seems to want to get rid of these constraints and directly made it look like a floor without much height difference.

The "V suit" in "The Three-Body Problem" is not a fake prop

Of course, Holotile also needs to be used with a VR headset. Users can walk in any direction as long as they step on it. With the virtual reality scenes provided by VR headsets, users feel like they are really walking in the virtual world.

Disney believes that Holotile can open up new possibilities for VR applications, including gaming, education and even travel.

Head-mounted displays such as Meta Quest3 and Apple VisionPro actually provide a visual experience in the virtual reality world, while Walk mini and Holotile try to provide somatosensory experience. A breakdown refers to sports/action experience. It not only solves the dizziness caused by the conflict between senses and movement, but also enhances the immersion of virtual reality.

Imagine that you wear a VR headset and stand on a VR treadmill to "eat chicken". Turning around, drawing a gun, and shooting are not like operations on a mobile phone that can only be operated with two fingers. Now, you have to move your legs to "run drugs". At that time, your avatar in the game is really "you" yourself, and the sense of immersion is immediately maximized.

However, although VR treadmills can provide a sense of exercise, people who want to be like Wang Miao in the "Three-Body" drama can feel the smooth weather of the Eternal Era and the cold and heat of the Era of Chaos in the V-suit, now the VR equipment does not yet have this kind of haptic capability, but some people are working on it.

02 Rich physical sensations have to wait a while

Liu Cixin, the author of "The Three-Body Problem", once described his ideal The virtual reality world: "VR is a three-dimensional virtual world simulated by computers. Vision, hearing, touch and even smell can interact with the virtual scene. This is a brand new experience."

Single Speaking of Holotile, it only solves a simple walking experience. Although it allows us to "walk" every corner of the virtual world on a floor of a few square meters, the human walking experience is much greater because of the diversity of space. Go, "it's easier to go up the mountain than to go down the mountain", climb the stairs on an empty stomach to "burn your calories", walk faster and it's a trot. Holotile cannot yet provide these "walking" experiences.

Judging from the demonstration video, Holotile currently does not support large-scale lower limb movements, such as jumping and running fast. These actions are already very common in 2D and 3D games, which shows that it needs to continue to be upgraded.

In addition to vision and movement, we also hope to realize touch and even smell in the virtual world, just like the character experience in "Ready Player One" or "The Three-Body Problem". Now, the tactile sensation is on the way to be solved, but it seems to be quite difficult.

As early as 2021, the team of Meta Reality Labs launched the research and development project of "Pneumatic Tactile Gloves", which can use air bags to allow users to experience the reality of grabbing virtual objects. Touch, in order to give users a more immersive tactile experience, and also want to use it to liberate players from the headset controller.

Meta's pneumatic haptic gloves

Meta once described the development of VR haptic gloves as a "moon landing plan", but unfortunately the future is not clear.

“When we started developing VR touch gloves, we hoped to create a consumer device that could be mass-produced and affordable by consumers, so that people could experience the virtual world anywhere.” Meta's project leader said regretfully, "But this is almost impossible." 

As he said, using new equipment to provide tactile sensations in virtual reality involves new materials , new sensors and actuators, new integration and system methods, new rendering algorithms, new physics engines, and more. To this day, the glove is still in development. It is said that the prototype cost of this glove is about US$5,000. It is conceivable that even if it is actually launched, consumers will be embarrassed.

Whether it is a VR treadmill or a VR glove, they are essentially accessories for a VR headset. They must be used with the headset to function. However, the headset is still in the process of exploring sales. There is no such thing. Basically, it is difficult to open the market for these accessories.

For example, Virtuix, the “pioneer” of VR treadmills, launched the Omni project in 2013, raised more than $1.1 million, and launched two VR universal treadmills, Omni Pro and Omni One. , but the price of more than 2,000 US dollars directly caused Virtuix sales failure. To date, the Omni Pro has sold just over 3,500 units.

For these sexier VR equipment, users who like to experience virtual reality first have to wait for VR headsets to form a mass consumption climate.