Footsteps VR

Virtual Reality is amazing.

Virtual Reality transports us to new worlds. It gives us impossible freedoms of experience. It is — unequivocally — one of the greatest creative endeavours of our age.

So let’s quickly run through what can we actually do in these virtual worlds and have a quick stab at understanding what makes the experiences feel so incredible. So real.

Eyes

We found a way to completely fool our eyes. Looking around feels real because it is real to our brains, it’s real because we feel the muscles on our neck stretch and contract as we pan our heads, we’re actually looking around. And when we see things flash in the corner of our eyes we spin instinctively to focus at them in the exact same way we’ve been practising for millions of years. Hundreds of millions. Since we first developed a Limbic system to warn us of predators. It is a perfect paradigm of an invisible interface. It’s poetically natural. Not even pinch-to-zoom or Hey, Siri has such intuitiveness, such a low bar to entry. Intuitiveness woven into the very fabric of our biology.

Hands

We can do more that look around though. We can actually manipulate objects with our hands — not all objects but some. And a few can even get close to this same sense of inherent intuitiveness. Most VR sets give us a magic wand to point and that makes some specific actions feel incredible, swinging a sword, fishing, wielding a paintbrush.

The same sort of things that made the Nintendo Wii such a hit over a decade ago. It often requires us to hold a button or click a trigger (which is a poor experience), but some awesome companies are working on really cool things to help us remove these limitations and perform much more complex actions with our hands, much more precisely.

The virtual eyes and the virtual hands when used together take us even deeper into these new worlds. They give us unparalleled control.

But.

There’s one place that the entire VR experience completely falls down. One place where we find ourselves distinctly un-immersed.

Walking in VR sucks.

I’ve tried out a lot of VR experiences and I can tell you categorically that walking in VR sucks.

Some use a traditional game controller input, asking you to move the analog joystick to move your avatar. And that’s fine for traditional gaming, some of us got so used to it that it feels almost natural.

But it’s not.

It’s not good enough for VR. Firstly there’s a whole upcoming generation of mobile gamers that don’t have the time and inclination to master joysticks. And why should they? More importantly, it occupies your hands, and we need our hands to manipulate the virtual environment. More importantly even still, we’re aiming for direct manipulation here, and we’re stubbing our chubby thumbs at a little rotating disk. It’s absurd.

Some VR games use a system of teleportation where you point where you want to go and click a button and the game beams you there. It’s a little better, but either way, it’s occupying your hands and it’s unnatural and it’s always something you need to consider. It’s just not intuitive. “How do I move again?” Point, click, hold, release. It’s a permanent cognitive load in a world where some things feel so perfect.

A world where I’m looking with my actual eyes, where I’m holding a sword with my actual hard, but where I’m approximating moving my legs by performing a crude and arbitrary set of thumb gestures.

It’s not good enough.

So. We need a better way to walk in VR.

Like this right?

Yeah!

No.

I’m not putting one of those in my apartment and neither are you. I’m not going to walk 100k on a treadmill to complete VR Zelda and neither are you. I want to play VR Zelda while laying sprawled across the sofa.

Feet

OK. Now. Do something for me. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading this while standing or sitting or lying down (and that’s sort of the point).

Here’s what I want you to do.

I want you to wiggle the big toe on your left foot just once. One single solitary wiggle. Down then up.

How did that feel?

It isn’t too tiring, is it. Did you feel a very slight twitch in muscles all the way up your leg?

Ok, now do the same thing with the big toe on your right foot. Down, up. One wiggle.

Feels good?

Now alternate. Left. Then right. Then left, then right. At about the same pace that you would walk.

Ok, are you warmed up? Let’s test it out. Move your toes along with the gif at about the same pace that the character seems to be walking.

This is how I propose we walk in VR. We put a stylish little band on our big toes and we wiggle them. We wiggle fast to go fast, we wiggle slow to go slow.

The strain on your leg muscles should be little enough to not be tiring during extended gameplay but pronounced enough to fool your brain into believing that you are actually walking. To finally give the legs the same joy and freedom as the eyes and hands.

That’s the hope anyway.

I’ve been shopping this around to a lot of people and I’ve collected a lot of interesting questions:

• Do you not think people will get tired after a while?
• How do you change direction?
• Can you walk backwards?
• Can’t it be an ankle bracelet instead (and what colours will it come in)?
• How can this adapt to people with disabilities?

We need a prototype to start answering these questions. Let’s find a way to make this thing happen, shall we?

To read about our work on Immersive technology and the work we are doing with other exciting new technologies, or to collaborate with Digital Catapult get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.