Omni-directional Treadmills Could Allow You to Roam Virtual Environments
An omni-directional treadmill is just like your traditional gym treadmill, except instead of only being able to go forward, you can move in any direction. There are a number of ways to achieve such omni-directional locomotion, but the resulting machine would be excellent to let virtual reality users to literally stroll around in a virtual environment.
Allowing players to move and interact with a virtual environment in a natural way is one of the key components to creating an immersive virtual world. To date, all input for mainstream gaming has been done with some sort of controller. To walk forward in an FPS, you’re probably pressing forward on a control stick. Even motion controlled games have little or no support for moving your player by actually walking. In the case of the Wii and Kinect, this issue arises because of the small area in which the player is tracked. Even if the tracking area were larger, you’d inevitably run into walks or other objects.
An omni-directional treadmill would let you walk, or even run through massive virtual spaces. Oh and did I mention that omni-directional treadmills already exist? Yeah, actually the first patent for the omni-directional treadmill was awarded all the way back in 1996! See an omni-directional treadmill in action: