One of the defining features of Minecraft is its procedurally-generated landscape which creates unique and effectively infinite maps for players to explore. Now, with Minecraft on Gear VR and the Virtuix Omni VR treadmill, you can walk that infinite landscape on foot.

While Minecraft has been available in VR through a third-party mod for some time now, the only way to get the official (and latest version) running in virtual reality is through the newly released Minecraft on Gear VR. With the game running on Gear VR, players can have a completely mobile experience, not needing to tether the headset to a PC.

Photo courtesy Oculus
See Also: John Carmack’s Quest to Bring Minecraft to Virtual Reality

That’s particularly useful for the Virtuix Omni because it means no wires to deal with while using the VR treadmill. The Omni supports Minecraft ‘automatically’ through a pretty neat function: Bluetooth gamepad emulation. Yes indeed, the large VR treadmill presents itself to Gear VR as a humble bluetooth gamepad, allowing it to feed the same inputs that a controller would into the headset.

The result of course is the ability to physically stroll through Minecraft’s effectively endless—and often, surprisingly beautiful—virtual worlds.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • WyrdestGeek

    This is cool.

    I was wondering about setting up something like this with a kinect and a laptop (and the laptop acting as a bluetooth gamepad), but then I read about latency issues with bluetooth.

    From what I’m readying, it seems affect some kinds of bluetooth devices more than others?

    —
    Furry cows moo and decompress.

  • Do you really need a harness for it? Rovr did this last week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaaLxW5_8Y0

    • David Bridgland

      Yes, the day after Minecraft VR launched. The Wizdish ROVR is cheaper, lighter and easier to use, and available today. It’s perfect for walking and exploring games like this. Here’s a link to their website – http://www.rovr.rocks

      • RavnosCC

        All the videos I see of ROVR are folks holding on to the base or leaning on the base quite frequently, do they have any videos of folks using hand motion controllers w/out using the ring? I see the ring as pretty limiting right now your total body movement.

        • David Bridgland

          Most of the videos are at public events where the users are new to the ROVR. It is like giving people ice skates and saying ‘have fun’. You have to hold on initially. But after not very long you don’t need to hold on. See this video to see what I mean. No support ring required – https://youtu.be/zL32YMyvvB0.

          • RavnosCC

            Nice. Definitely getting closer… I wonder if they couldn’t make the platform a bit bigger so you could crouch to your knees if need be and also have the Vive, as an example only, use the couple inches of added height the platform gives you as the floor.

          • VR Cat

            I don’t think that would be safe when you’re wearing a VR headset and can no longer see your actual surroundings.

    • VR Cat

      Yes, you can see how the Omni harness is giving him the stability to walk naturally and not have to hold on to the ring – it’s very well designed.

  • RavnosCC

    While I love what the OMNI is doing, I just can’t stand watching people in VR using console controllers… we gotta come up with some kind of motion controller solution that also allows your legs to move! (something more improved than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQw1tsgrJOs)

    • VR Cat

      You can use motion controllers for hand input with the Omni. They’re using a gamepad here because this is the Gear VR version; but yes I also can’t wait for dual hand tracking to become the standard on both mobile and desktop platforms.

      • RavnosCC

        Well, what I’m trying to get at, is that the harness, etc gets in the way of the motion controllers, I’ve run through plenty of experiences with the dual motion controllers that require me to “duck, crawl on my knees, have my hands touch the floor, etc…” The problem I see w/a protective ring, or even a limited floor area to some extant, is that you cannot do those things. That effectively limits your hand tracking to above the belt :-/ So it’s a trade off, either room scale with teleporting for exploration, OR multi-directional treadmill w/limited motion control to above the belt, around the harness, etc… not sure how to solve this though.

        • VR Cat

          Hands aren’t limited to above the ring – you can bend over and reach down to pick an object up off the floor. As for crawling on your knees… okay you wouldn’t use an ODT for that, lol. I would suggest maybe press a button to lower your height to floor level instead – not sure I want to do a lot of crawling at my age!