Virtuix Omni VR Treadmill lets you literally walk and run in your games

The Oculus Rift is getting support from developers in the strangest ways. According to Eurogamer, footage has popped up of team-based multiplayer FPS Team Fortress 2 being played on the Oculus Rift along with an omnidirectional treadmill. Coupled with a gun controller, this could easily be the most realistic way to play any shooter. Check out the video:

The treadmill is a prototype Virtuix Omni VR Treadmill and allows you to step, walk or run in any direction you want. It plugs into a computer so that your movements are fed into the game. This essentially means that you can control your character’s movements by moving yourself. While it does allow you to control movement with your own feet, jumping seems to be a tricky proposition.

“The action feels like real running,” Virtuix boss Jan Goetgeluk told Road to VR. “The immersion is intense. I had a former Marine try HL2 yesterday, and he was slightly shaking.”

The Virtuix Omni VR Treadmill will be funded via Kickstarter and the campaign is slated to start soon.

Just recently, we saw developers porting the cult-classic free-running game Mirror’s Edge to the virtual reality headset. The developer, who goes by the alias Cymatic Bruce, seems to be using a controller to handle the general movement of the main character. Thanks to the headset, one wouldn’t have to deal with clumsy analogue stick to look around. Instead, players can simply move their heads around. A nine minute long video gives us a good look at one of the many things that is possible with the Oculus Rift.

Now with real running!

The virtual reality headset has been gaining popularity ever since developers got their hands on the early-backer version of the device. Just recently, the guys over at iFixit released its teardown of the Oculus Rift and they were impressed. The headset got a score of 9 out of 10 for repairability and “can be taken apart in less than 10 minutes”.

It is worth noting, however, that the version of the Oculus Rift that was taken apart is the developer version that was sent out to backers of the Kickstarter campaign. Whether or not the consumer version will be this easy to take apart and repair will only be known once the headset has been launched for the public.

So far, everyone who has had hands-on time with the Oculus Rift at events such as PAX or GDC has been mightily impressed by the headset. It will be interesting to see how the developers handled the latency issues that are associated with virtual reality gaming headsets.