When it comes to playing video games, immersion is one of the most important aspects for players. This is where VR glasses have managed to attract millions of people interested in diving into virtual reality experiences. Although we can see the virtual environment in front of our eyes, there is still a need for new peripherals that allow us greater realism and control. Now, a Walt Disney engineer presents the Holo Tile Floor, an omnidirectional treadmill that strongly reminds us of what we saw in Ready Player One.
A few years ago, movies that immersed us in virtual universes seemed like a distant future. While it is true that current VR and AR glasses have not yet reached those levels, we can say that our technology is on the way to making it a reality. By wearing VR glasses, we can immerse ourselves in the game, and our entire environment is virtual, while our movement is limited to the room or space where we connect. With AR glasses, we have an augmented reality experience, which means seeing the real world but adding video game content.
The Holo Tile Floor is the latest invention from a Disney engineer with 106 registered patents.
Depending on what we are looking for, there are VR or AR glasses, but if we want to focus on gaming, virtual reality is ideal. These peripherals are even found in theme parks, with attractions that require more immersion and a cinema screen in front of us is not enough. Lanny Smoot, an R&D employee at Walt Disney Imagineering, has shown us his latest invention.
Lanny has been working at Walt Disney for 25 years and has been responsible for creating special effects for the Haunted Mansion and next-generation Star Wars lightsabers. Moreover, he has won the NIHF (National Inventors Hall of Fame) award, which only he and Walt Disney himself have in the entire company. This time he surprises us with something different called Holo Tile Floor, an omnidirectional treadmill designed for use in VR.
We can move in any direction, and it will return us to the original place.
The concept seems to be inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, a futuristic movie where people could connect to a kind of “Virtual Reality Metaverse” called OASIS. To do this, they would wear glasses and have a treadmill that allowed them to move in all dimensions without actually moving, providing a more realistic experience within the metaverse. Although the movie was set in a dystopian future of 2045, we can now see something similar represented more than 20 years earlier.
The Holo Tile Floor is a surface that is placed on the ground and allows us to walk in any direction and automatically adjusts to ensure we have not moved. Each tile moves according to our movement. Two or more people can stand on the Holo Tile Floor, and it will adjust their movements in all directions to make sure they stay in place. This treadmill will be used in Walt Disney theme parks, but perhaps, in the future, we might see it as a peripheral designed for virtual reality gaming in our homes.
The Holo Tile Floor, the treadmill for moving and playing in Virtual Reality that seems taken from the movie Ready Player One, was first featured on El Chapuzas Informático.
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