virtuix omni kickstarter

Virtuix and Sixense will be at this weekend’s Pax Prime in Seattle to demonstrate what they’re calling the “ultimate virtual reality experience,” a platform consisting of the Virtuix Omni, Sixense STEM, and the Oculus Rift.

Today marks the start of Pax Prime 2013, one of the biggest gaming conventions, held in Seattle Washington. Virtuix and Sixense are attending and they’re going to let attendees step into their virtual reality setup, a combination of the perhaps the three most exciting VR peripherals to date.

PAX Prime attendees can find the VR setup at the Virtuix Omni booth (#6210, zone 2, level 6) from the 30th of August to September 2nd, 10am – 6pm.

This bit of teamwork also give us a hint that Virtuix might use the Sixense STEM as their thus far unannounced tracking system which will enable the Omni to detect players walking and running.

There’s no word on what demos they’ll use the system with at PAX Prime, though we might see an early build of TRAVR, a game in the works by Virtuix that’s designed to show off the Omni’s capabilities, and to help developers learn how to build support for their games. Oculus VR Inc will also be at PAX Prime 2013… maybe they’ll lend the fine folks from Virtuix and Sixense one of the Oculus Rift HD prototypes?

virtuix omni kickstarter 2

The Virtuix Omni is an omnidirectional treadmill that was successfully funded on Kickstrater at the end of July after raising $1.1 million. It allows players to walk, run, and jump in virtual reality. The earliest production Omnis are expected to be delivered in January.

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sixense stem pax prime

The Sixense STEM is a forthcoming motion controller system which supersedes the Razer Hydra. STEM will have two wireless motion controllers and support up to three additional tracking points which can be used to track a players feet and hands, or be attached to peripherals. Sixense will be launching a Kickstarter campaign for STEM on September 12th.

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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."
  • kijutsu

    “This bit of teamwork also give us a hint that Virtuix might use the Sixense STEM as their thus far unannounced tracking system which will enable the Omni to detect players walking and running.”

    They won’t, Jan said on the Omni forums that while the Omni will NOT be using STEM trackers it will be fully compatible with them. What does that mean exacly? Does it mean the Omni will take care of the feet and still use 5 STEM trackers? I don’t know…

    Anyway, here’s the link:
    http://www.virtuix.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1818
    “I want to confirm that the Omni will NOT come with any STEM trackers”

    • Ben Lang

      Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’ll append the article. It’s possible that Sixense is making them custom hardware. Jan saying that it will remain ‘fully compatible’ probably just means that you can strap STEMs to your shoes if you want!

  • Kamus

    Still not sold on the Omni. But this should make it more interesting than it was.

    I just don’t think that strapping yourself into theOmni sounds like a very good idea, unless you are planing on just walking and running the whole time… Something you would never do in real life.

    On a PC you could do that because you are just “running” with your finger and turning with your mouse. Not something i would call fatiguing.
    Moving around is important in VR, but if you think about it, this thing doesn’t let you do that very well. Sure it lets you run and walk. But you can’t really explore your surroundings if you can’t reach out to the floor, sit, or pretty much do any type of natural movements that would be impossible to do because you are in a locked position.

    For those reasons i can see it being just sort of useful for current FPS games where you are walking and running non stop, because well, that’s the only thing you do in those games. (but you wouldn’t be able to do it for more than maybe 15 minutes at a time, you’d be exhausted!)

    But VR games will not be about running non stop.. exploring the details of the world is suddenly possible in VR, and somehow the old “running at 40 MPH” type of games seem very inadequate.